Honestly, I thought of going through with the unthinkable. It happens every time my mother makes me hate living. She does it time and time again, and every single time, I hate that I’m alive.

She makes it unnecessarily difficult. I think of all the things I could have become and continue to be proud of all the things I did become under so many different circumstances, and then there’s my mother, being my worst cheerleader at every turn. And then she wonders why I didn’t want to invite her to my graduation. She’s forgetting all the times she made it difficult for me to live while I was struggling to manage studies and life.

And I’ll be the terrible daughter in everyone’s book because how dare I. When this mother has sacrificed her whole life for us, how dare I resent anything. But I do. I’m eternally grateful for all the sacrifices she made, but I will always hate the moments in my life where she made me feel I should’ve been dead.

I’m in my thirties, and I continue to be heartbroken at the hands of my parents. The pain they inflict upon me is nothing compared to all the other shit I go through in life. It aches in my heart where these wounds are, and they never heal because they are constantly picked on.

It took me years to realize, or even share what it feels like with her. First, I was so embarrassed about it because it’s not like any other mother-daughter relationship I know. Second, I refused to believe someone who’d sacrificed so much for us could also be the reason for my pain. But it’s true, both of these can be true. She’s human too, and as flawed as any of us. But the way I understand her, try to see things from her view, she doesn’t bother with mine. My perspectives are irrelevant. All my life she made me feel like she hated the fact that she birthed me. She made me feel like I was a waste of space, air, breath. I hated myself. I grew up hating myself. I didn’t know what loving myself would ever feel like. I didn’t think I deserved anything nice, or any kindness even.

So I continued to settle with shitty men, glorifying their shitty treatment. Why wouldn’t I? I get the same treatment at home; I was right at home in these men’s arms. What they made me feel was what I felt by the two people I loved in this world first, my parents.

But even through this, there is something I appreciate about my mother, how she didn’t make it difficult for me when I took off my hijab. She did share her displeasure with it, but when I went ahead with it, she said little about it. Although had she gone on about it I would’ve understood too. But I really do appreciate that she didn’t.

And now the other thing she constantly gets upset over is my choice of clothing. She reacts a bit whenever I wear something that’s a bit see-through. And I get really annoyed at it because where was this energy when unwarranted men had access to me, when I was a minor.

I’m an adult now and, god willing, am able to take care of myself. I don’t put myself in rooms with people I can’t trust, so my choice of clothing, see-through or not, wouldn’t get me in trouble because I will make sure of it. I wouldn’t walk naked into the arms of men I don’t trust.

But that’s what happens with parents; they grow old and become more and more hypocritical and judgmental even.

And over the years, I really have tried to build a relationship with her, but every time she’s shot me down and left me more wounded than before. And so I’ve stopped trying and have accepted that we will never be like a typical mother and daughter. We will be so foreign to each other, but I came from her. And if I had to live this life again and could choose my mother, I don’t know if I’d make a different choice because through all the hurt and pain that is caused, I do love her, and she gave me my brother. I can’t imagine a world where I don’t have him as my brother; he was the reason I stayed alive for so long. He saved me with his existence. We might’ve grown apart as adults, but we were best friends as children. And I miss him constantly, the boy that he was. But life goes on.