London, England – 2004
I jolt upright in bed, doubling over. I wrap my arms around my torso as tightly as possible, rocking back and forth. My mouth is gaping, barely restraining the silent, fugitive screams while hot tears stream down my cheeks; nothing can stop them. I’m holding myself because it feels like my insides will burst through my skin. The veins in my head have surely exploded by now. Two names on my lips, between heavy sobs, I cry them out like a mantra, over and over. Jai. Veer. Jai. Veer. Jai. Veer …
It’s the middle of the night. I’d been asleep, hadn’t I? Even in those quiet hours of the night when one is supposed to get some respite from the reality of life, my pain never switches off. Without warning, the stark, icy blackness of the night outside the window penetrates; it intrudes and engulfs me night after night. My Jai. My Veer. My boys. My Jai. My Veer …
They are of my body. The thought of them is in my every breath. And breathing is something I have to do, even against my will, even when I’m sleeping. The only way to stop the pain is to stop breathing altogether. I tried and failed at that, too. I can’t do anything right: not life, not death.
How did I end up here? I have no idea. It’s as if one day, while out on a joyful walk on a sunlit day, I stepped into a tornado and was violently spun around, then spat out like an old dishcloth; dirty, sullied, stinking, of no use to anyone anymore.
They’d prefer it if I didn’t exist… he’d prefer it if I didn’t exist. Maanav couldn’t have made it any clearer.
It’s been almost a decade since I took a stand against the physical abuse in my childhood home. At sixteen, when I moved out, I was still dealing with the after-effects of that violence and the sexual abuse by the pensioner family friend who later killed himself. It’s in this vulnerable state that I met Maanav, fell in love, got pregnant, got married, welcomed our first child, Jai, when I was eighteen, and our second, Veer, just under three years later.
But now, I find myself divorced, living alone, and begging to see my children.
Do my children even know who I am? Do they know how I feel? Do they know I love them? Or do they believe everything they’re being told about this tragic woman who’s only their ‘biological mother’ and not their ‘real mum’? Mother’s Day isn’t even mine anymore. It’s hers. Does their new, ‘real mum’, who deserves Mother’s Day instead of me now, love them as I do?
As I sit here in the dark, crying out into the empty night of my rented room in a house I share with four other women, I’m only 25, but it feels like I’ve lived an entire lifetime. I’m tired; God, I’m so tired.
What went wrong?
(Originally published on os.me on August 23, 2022)