Mother-Daughter Dance

12/03/2025

It has been a handful of days. It seems like I am falling into the pattern of my old habits. Bad habits. Destructive habits. But with something different. There is a whole lot of thinking. Not just ruminatory thinking. But, contemplation. Planning. Actionable thinking. And, as usual, I am scared. Because, whatever has happened has changed something within me. It has broken me in a manner I have to restructurize myself. I don't know where to begin. It has been so painful today. I have medicated all a lot of my distinct pain with three different medications that put me to sleep for 6 hours but my gut is still in a twist. The panic attack has not seen a full stop. It keeps springing. Like it is in a marathon. Sometimes, it jumps and sometimes just crawls. It has been going on since yesterday. It is too much. I can't ignore but accept the fact that the worse might be yet to come. The fact is when your roots are rotten, how much can you heal above the ground? The screams I screamed that evening, is still vibrating within me. Like a echo that refuses to fade. The sound of my voice, raw and filled with desperation, lingers in the air of my mind like an endless reverberation. It’s as if the night itself has absorbed my agony, and with each passing second, it presses deeper into the corners of my thoughts, echoing over and over again. No matter how far I run, those screams follow me, pulling me back to that place. It’s a sensation I can’t escape, a haunting that refuses to release its grip on me. And, I don't know how to stop it. It has taken over my body now. I would wish to alter every thing but I cannot afford that level of delusion right now. The weight of it presses down, suffocating me with every breath I take. My mind is a battlefield, torn between the desire to escape and the realization that no matter how much I wish for things to change, the reality is far too unyielding. I can’t outrun it. I can’t silence it. And yet, I’m stuck—stuck in this web of overwhelming emotion and endless turmoil. To pretend it’s not there, to try and ignore it, feels like a betrayal of myself. But facing it head-on seems impossible. How does one fight something that’s already taken root so deeply inside? I wish I could wake up from this nightmare, but the truth is, I don't even know where the dream ends and the nightmare begins anymore.

And, I wish, us, mother and daughters could escape it but we are stuck in the eternal loop of being one entity revolving around him and trying hard to establish our own individualities leading to conflicts between us. It's as if we are tied together by some invisible thread, tangled in a web of shared pain, yet each of us trying so desperately to break free. The three of us, mother and daughters, caught in this eternal struggle for space, for identity, for something that’s our own, yet always tethered to him. Each of us pulls in a different direction, but the force of his presence keeps us bound together, no matter how far we try to go. It’s like we are all orbiting around him, struggling to break free from the gravity that keeps pulling us back. But every time one of us tries to step away, it feels like we are being yanked back into the same pattern—this cycle of expectation, of sacrifice, of needing to fit into roles that never truly belonged to us. I can feel the weight of the tension between us. The constant push and pull. It’s suffocating. We love each other, but sometimes, love is not enough to break free from the chains that bind us. The fights, the misunderstandings, the silent resentment—it all stems from the same root: a shared history that we can't escape and can't seem to rewrite. And so we continue, trapped in this loop, each of us yearning for independence but finding only conflict instead.

It, I think, starts with my mother. Mother, before she becomes a mother, is first turned into an extension of the father. Extension of a man. Not a woman anymore. Just an agent of man. And, when she is made to borne daughters, the daughters inherit that same fate, the same pattern. We are born into a world where our existence is shaped by what others see us as—extensions of him, reflections of what he needs, what he wants. It’s like our identities are already written before we even take our first breath. And my mother, who once was her own person, now exists as a mere agent of his desires, his expectations, a vessel for his continuation. She doesn’t know where her own needs and desires end, because they’ve been swallowed by the role she’s been forced to play. The role of mother, of caretaker, of sacrifice. But underneath it all, I can sense her lost pieces, the parts of her that used to be full of life, of rebellion, of dreams that didn’t fit into the mold of “wife” and “mother.” I wonder, was she ever allowed to simply be herself, or was she always just the extension of him, as if she was never allowed to exist beyond his shadow? And then, the daughters. We come into this world knowing no other way but to carry the same burden, to be raised in the image of what he needs. We're taught to be extensions of him too, not allowed the space to form ourselves, to find our own voices, to stand as individuals. Our identity is given to us by default, and the struggle is already there from the start—the quiet understanding that we are not meant to be whole, but pieces of something else. Each generation becomes a little more fractured, a little more lost, as we try to carve out what’s ours amidst the pressures, the expectations, and the roles that are thrust upon us. And with each passing day, I wonder if my daughters will feel the same weight, or if they’ll find a way to break free from the cycle we’ve been trapped in for so long.

And, if the daughters harbour thoughts of freedom, the mother's heart splits into two. She is both secretly happy and covertly angry. Yes, because the desire for freedom in her daughters is a mirror, a reflection of what was once denied to her. On one hand, she feels a flicker of joy, a quiet pride, because part of her—deep down—wants them to break free, to live lives that aren’t tethered by the same chains that bound her. She sees their potential, their strength, their ability to dream beyond the roles she was forced to play, and for a fleeting moment, it feels like a redemption. Like, through them, maybe she can live out the freedom she never had. But then, there's the anger, the bitterness that rises like bile in her throat. Because in her daughters' yearning for freedom, she sees what she was never allowed to have. She sees what she gave up, what was stolen from her. There’s the deep, unspoken ache—the guilt that she didn’t fight harder for herself, and the resentment that she was forced to sacrifice so much, just to survive, just to fulfill her duty as a mother and a wife. And then the truth settles in: as much as she loves her daughters, as much as she wishes for them to soar, it is terrifying. Terrifying because it brings up her own regrets, her own feeling of being trapped in a life she never truly chose. Seeing them chase freedom is like confronting the life she could have had, but never will. And so, she feels torn—both proud and resentful, both loving and bitter. The complexity of it all weighs on her, and it spills into the way she reacts. The contradictions of her emotions play out in the smallest of moments—her advice, her silence, her expectations, and the way she can never fully let go. Her heart is split in two, forever caught between wanting more for them and being afraid of what their freedom will mean for her.

Then, the daughters have to fight the battle of whether to set themselves free or stitch their mother's hearts. And so, the daughters stand at a crossroads, torn between the desire for their own lives, their own paths, and the weight of the unspoken burden to protect their mothers from the pain their freedom might cause. The battle is silent, but it's constant—a war fought in the heart, in the quiet moments when they look at their mothers and see the cracks, the quiet sorrow, the sacrifices that have shaped her into who she is. How can they walk away from that? How can they break free without leaving her behind, without shattering what little is left of her? They know that every step they take toward their own lives feels like another cut to her heart. And yet, to stay bound to her—to live the life she lived, to carry on the cycle—feels like a betrayal of everything they could be. It is a cruel paradox. To love her is to feel the pull to keep her whole, to stitch her heart back together with the threads of their own dreams, even if those dreams are fragments of what they could have been. But to set themselves free is to risk tearing that fragile bond even further, to risk the pain of separation that could break them both. They are caught between wanting to honor her, to make her proud, and the knowledge that, in the end, they can never truly be free until they break away from the expectations she never got to escape herself. In the quiet of their own minds, they wonder: Is it possible to break the cycle without breaking her? Can they be whole without causing her to unravel? The cost of freedom feels so high. And yet, the cost of staying the same, of stifling their own desires, their own selves, is even higher. The question remains—can they find a way to heal her wounds, to stitch her heart, while still setting themselves free? Or will the very act of their liberation be the thing that drives the final wedge between them?

14/03/2025

It is the story of every mother and her daughters. They exist as roots entangled in a barren soil, each one yearning to stretch upward, to reach for the sun, but held back by the weight of the earth beneath them. The mother, weathered and worn, is the deep root—the one that has been buried for so long, its once-strong branches now twisted and bent, struggling to grow free. She tries to guide her daughters, offering them the nutrients of love, but her own roots are so tightly bound to the darkness of the past that they cannot escape, and neither can her daughters. The daughters are the fragile shoots, pushing through the soil, eager to reach the light, but with every inch they rise, the roots above them constrict, pulling them back, dragging them into the earth’s suffocating embrace. They are desperate to bloom, to become something more than what they were born into, yet the mother's shadow looms large, and the weight of her silent sacrifices presses down on them like an unyielding stone. They exist as thorns in a vine, each trying to pierce through the pain of the past, but unable to break free of the vine that holds them together, each one cutting into the other as they try to escape. The deeper they struggle, the more the blood of their shared history stains their hands, yet the vine keeps pulling them back, forcing them to remain entwined, even as their hearts scream to be free.

I fantasize for a happy ending. But, we all know how this curtain falls—slowly, quietly, as the weight of untold stories sinks in. The dreams of freedom, once bright and vivid, fade into the haze of compromise, of quiet resignation. The mother's hands, once full of hope, become trembling, fragile from years of holding on to what could never truly be hers. The daughters, too, become shadows of what they could have been, their wings clipped by the invisible ties that bind them to a past they cannot escape. The curtain falls not with the final note of a triumphant song, but with a sigh—a breath held for too long, now escaping in a rush. The space between them, once filled with possibilities, now sits heavy with unspoken words, with the ache of love that could never be fully realized. They are all still standing, still bound to each other in the dance they never asked for, playing their parts, but never fully free. The curtain falls, and with it, the hope that someday, the weight of the past will lift, that someday they will find their way out of the darkness, only to discover that perhaps, this is all they can ever be. And, in the silence that follows, a quiet truth lingers—sometimes, survival is the only way paved for us. Even when it feels like the ending was never quite what you imagined.

Here I am again. Counting the tablets in my hand. The pain is back. Because, the panic is coursing through my veins. The body is throttling with all the bottled up screams. I am unable to contain it. Tired to having my panic attacks on mute under a thin blanket. Squeezing out the screams from the eyes to not wake up anyone. To not be an inconvenience. I have ended up with a soul that is chock-full of headaches. And, a throat that feels like it’s constantly on the verge of choking—tight, constricted, as if every word I’ve never said is stuck there, unwilling to escape. It burns, the weight of unspoken things, and I can’t find the relief. My mind is foggy, tangled in a mess of thoughts that race, but never reach clarity. Every inch of me feels like it’s on the edge, always fighting to stay composed, yet constantly being pulled apart from the inside.

- Oizys.