Scattered

 my brain.

Used to always be this way but worse since motherhood.

My soul is on fire.

It was my baby's first Eid. I had plans for years. 

Going to Eid dawats and watching parents fix their kids Eid outfits, dupattay, shalwar, fussing over Eid pictures, the glee on their kids faces getting Eidi....

This year was going to be my year. I went to Pakistan. I splurged on my Eid outfit. I got a matching kurta and koti made in the span of a week for baba and baby. I hosted chand raat, I made sheer while my baby had a fever and I got no sleep and I rocked him and fed him....

S drank on chand raat. 

I shouldn't have been surprised. It's happened for many years before, but somehow i thought it would be important for him too to show up for this Eid.

He stayed in his office till 3 am. After much begging and pleading, he went to bed only to be woken by a (really dumb!) cousins Eid call from Karachi at 5am. He refused to go back to sleep and decided to call every phuppo and cousin of his wishing them Eid, and then again after much begging pleading he slept again at 6. We woke up at 8 and he somehow made it to Eid namaz.

We had family dinner that day....he went home and drank. Made up some elaborate excuse of a power outage affecting his client he had to manage. His sister begged him. Dad.  Me. Made no difference. Didn't go to Eid dinner.

I cried. But that was just the start. 

He didn't go to our friends potluck chai the next day either.

Nor the dinner hosted by my khala the next evening.

I don't have words to describe the humiliation of showing up to all these places without him...again...and seeing everyone's questioning eyes, where is S? 

Maybe this is Allah swts rehmat. I used to pray that if I'm meant to be with him then protect our bond, and if not then remove his love from my heart. 

I'm already playing the role of single mom. He steps in for fatherly duties maybe am hour max a day, that too to just play with Sufi. I do all the diaper changes. All the feedings. The cooking for his solids. Cleaning the house. Making sure there's groceries. Making sure we are stocked on diapers and clothes and food. Doctors appointments. Anything his dad might need, and now his brother. While hearing him curse me out.

Yesterday at Khalas I broke down. I tried not to but when she saw me without him, she kissed my forehead and hugged me and the tears I had so firmly lodged behind my eyelids just poured down.

My bleeding aching heart. All thes years and all these duas and this fight to literally pry my child from the heavens to earth, and even now to face disappointment.

Maybe I needed to just stop holding space for S. Forget this illusion of a happy smiling family with mama and baba and baby. Everything I've ever wanted since I was a kid. Maybe it just isn't meant for me.

My heart is grieving. I recently read a post about how isolating it is for wives of alcoholics because you are grieving an entire person while they're still alive. We don't hold space for thwt type of grief. There's no public acceptance for it.  No understanding. 

You can take bereavement leave at work after death, how do I take leave for this?

He was my bestest friend. He held me together after the molestation, when I was lost and didn't know how to get back to myself again. He drove from NY to Toronto for my endoscopy so I wouldn't be alone. We've been together 18 years this year. Almost 2 decades, half my life. He's all I've known my adult life.

He propelled me to chase every success, in career, or family. Stood up for me in front of his family. And my own. Always pushed me to help my parents out more. Never stopped me from going out, from travelling alone, for chasing any dream I wanted. Provided for me and does to this day. 

And then.....I lost him. The bottle has taken his soul. He is so little of himself that no one recognizes him now. Everyone tells me privately, he's not himself. Is he OK? He looks lost. Confused. Dazed. So unsure.

What a beautiful man he used to be. Everyone used to be in his awe of his beauty. His gentle face. His demeanor. Easy smile. Kindness. 

He's hollow. Sunken eyes. Yellowing skin. Sarcastic and arrogant. His easy smile curves into a snarl as it spews out curses at me he doesn't remember. The worst most degrading curses. He threatens me. I will take everything from you. Watch what I will do to you. Wait it's coming. The divorce is coming. I'll have an affair. You'll go to Pakistan. You'll have nothing. On and on and on. Relentless.

Only to not remember ANY of it in a few days. The cloud lifts and with that the memory of any abuse. 

The safest man I ever knew now the one I cannot stand to be around because I'm so hauntingly terrified of what he will verbally attack me with next.

Where is my friend? Allah swt gave me my miracle boy but why take my comfort away? There's nothing left between us. He hasn't hugged me in days. There's almost no physical contact between us at all. I used to inhale him in, I used to center my nerves listening to his heartbeat, clutching onto his shirt.

He's gone. He's in front of me but he's gone. I can see him, reach out and touch him if I wanted to, hear his voice, smell him when he on the extremely rare occasion doesn't smell like alcohol...but I don't know who this person is. I don't know who he is at all. 

I've lost the love of my life. And I don't know how to explain this grief to anyone. The way my soul is on fire. The way I feel on the inside, like I'm screaming and screaming into an abyss. Like I'm watching so horrific and I want it to stop but I can't. 

I'm watching the person I loved the most, die slowly and painfully in front of me. I can't stop him. I can't help. I can't do anything because I've tried everything and he doesn't want to be helped. 

It is an unimaginable pain. 

.......

My baby sleeps with little toes curled against me. His hair sweaty from his first day at the beach, sand lodged in his scalp. He breathes away against my skin, little tiny fist resting on my chest, like the sweetest little balm where it hurts the most.

Fa inna ma'al usri yusra. Verily with hardship there is ease.

He replaced my ease with another ease. And I am trying to find gratitude in my heart for all of it. 

I hope Allah swt gives me another miracle. Bring my love back to me.

(Ameen)

e

 January 25

Karachi, Pakistan.

Because only a breather from the chaos could inspire me to write, really write, about you....

..........

The way your hair smells... Your tiny little fingers.

The way your feet rest against my legs.

I could spend a lifetime cradling your tiny little body against mine, my beautiful baby boy. 

You have reawoken parts of me I thought were long gone. With your tender smile and bright deep eyes.

I love you in ways I didn't know I could.

...........

3/12

You sleep with all the casual carefree light heartedness of early life.

Arms and legs sprawled wide on the bed. Your tiny little body taking up way more room than I would think possible.

My little enigma, I stare at you in awe.

The vast world outside, mountains, oceans, forests, jungles,

people, lands, languages, wars, politics,

Opinions, norms, cultures.

So much vastness, the galaxy

All of it contained within your caramel hand

Laying across my chest.

My entire universe.

I will paint you with the bluest stars 

The happiest white moons

Infinite glowing suns.

........

When I was in Grade 2 (7 years old), a girl in the school playground told me I was too dark for her to play with.

I observed my arms confusedly underneath the palm trees. What was too dark? What did it mean I was 'too kaali'? Like it was a slur. A stain I couldn't ever wash off.

< Insert thought provoking comment about post colonial colorism here >

My husband is several shades lighter than me, if you were to hold a Home depot paint shade card against our skins. He would disagree, and say not like any of it matters anyway.

I know it mattered to his mom who wanted the white glowing prize on a pedestal for her favourite and her first born. I was gawky and awkward (my husband would disagree), my browness eating at me. 

I read so extensively and disagreed with perpetuated stereotypes so whole heartedly, arguing with my nani that she was so beautiful when she too confessed of feeling inferior in her beautiful wheat skin. I argued but her insistence bought foundation two shades too light for her anyway.

Many years later my chachi would tell me I wore my foundation all wrong, it should be the lightest color on the market.

When my dear son was born, he was pale and pink. A few days later he started to darken, until his beautiful soft skin was darker than anyone else I had seen born into either of our families.

I was terrified. As I looked through his baby photos one night, the only thought going through my head was, what if the kids didn't play with him either? What if he too stood in a playground one day, wondering why he was too "kaala" to be played with, too "kaala" to be loved?

All these thoughts swirled deep, deep inside my heart as I boarded the plane with him to Pakistan. So deep i could not admit them to anyone at all. I felt ashamed of myself for even thinking it, and yet I was afraid of the comments I knew would come. I practiced retorts I would deliver with grace and a steely finality should someone say anything about him. I would protect him with a fierceness I had never before known.

At then, the ultimate surprise. A month in Pakistan and not a single person said anything. Not a word. And he was so so so loved everywhere he went. It's as if what I saw in my mind, no one did at all.

As I lay in bed with his beautiful chocolate leg against my  wheatish one, I wonder if he even knows how much he has already healed my heart. How much of myself I disliked all these years, struggling within my skin, now rests easy wrapped around him.

My beautiful starry eyed boy. So much I must learn from you yet. So much I must unlearn. So hopeful it is different for you. So hopeful you will only know love. 

E

Reading words helps to find the words

The ones lost in my brain wandering fumbling looking 

for my voice

To string them into coherence again.

I pluck my hair in the bathroom 

Carefully separating the shining gossamer silver

In front of the mirror, at 4 am

Defiance.

I have held anger in my every nerve for so long.

Anger at him for giving me this life I did not agree to.

Anger at myself for agreeing to live this life I never wanted

For too long

Anger at lost youth, the laughter I should have still had, the sullen terrified memories that fill my skin instead of

What could have been.

Instead my head is filled with white silver threads of anger

"wisdom" gained from raw pain and jaw clenching, soul ripping, self destructing forbearance.

When his grandparents used to use my towel, unasked,

They would leave behind traces of themselves in it for me to find.

Mostly white hair strands I would have to pull out, with disgust.

I would feel violated. My privacy, my beloved belongings tainted.

I was so young then. Naive. There was so many more ways in which a violation can occur. 

Body. Soul. Principles.

The grandparents passed on.

The towels faded, discarded.

The disgust remained.

So I pluck out each silver hair with unnecessary force. As if it is still theirs growing from my scalp. 

The only semblance of control I have left.

As if it will erase the pain. As if it will erase the horror that grips my heart.

As if...if I look myself, nothing would have changed.

The anger simmers behind my eyeballs still.

...

E