scream is my father tongue.

scream is my father tongue,

a jagged thing, sharp as splinters,
rooted deep in the marrow of bloodlines
that are too loud to be silent.
It starts in the chest, reverberates in the throat—
no softening, no apology.
It is a language woven in fire,
a tongue of anger and pride,
of warmth and war,
too thick for my mouth to swallow whole.

I hear it in the rustle of my mother’s apron,
in the crackle of old radios where his voice is more than sound—
it is history, the echo of a man still trembling
in the space between words and silence.
I inherit the sharpness of it,
the unspoken weight it carries.

But what of my voice?
A river too shallow to carry the same depth.
What do I say when words feel
like stones, heavy with the past?
When his voice looms behind me,
my own too light to fill the air between us?

In the face of his storms,
I learn to speak in whispers—
quiet, careful, as if my words are fragile glass,
afraid to shatter against the roar of a history
that was never mine to tame.
It’s not rebellion, not yet.
It is distance,
a distance like a mountain between my tongue
and his.

But within me, there grows a need,
a hunger to find the language
that is uniquely mine,
not dictated by the past,
not bound to the weight of his rage or silence.
I search for a word that feels lighter,
that can glide like feathers across the skin,
that can breathe without carrying
the weight of a hundred years of wars,
of things never spoken aloud.

Some days, I feel the urge to break free—
to toss the old language aside like a garment too heavy,
too stifling.
Other days, I carry it,
wrap it tight around my chest,
like a blanket passed down from grandmother to mother to me,
uncomfortable yet familiar,
a shield in a world where my voice often feels too soft
to make a mark.

I carve my identity in fragments of language,
in words stolen from books,
in laughter shared with friends who understand
the complexity of this inheritance.
I do not discard it; I adapt it.
I twist it, bend it to fit the contours of who I am becoming,
a voice that knows when to rise
and when to rest,
a voice that is soft but not without strength.

I stand before him,
knowing that I will never be fully free
from the weight of his tongue—
but in that freedom, I find my voice.
It is my inheritance, my heritage.
Not in the scream,
but in the quiet courage to speak in a way
that belongs to no one but me.

My words are the bridge
between past and future,
silent yet singing,
a new tongue forming in the spaces
between his shout and my whisper.

- Oizys.

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.

Faultlines of Writlurk

She wakes from the dirt,
claws at the bones of this rotting empire.
No soft hands here.
These hands,
they pry the sky open like a mouth, make it spit its secrets.
and count the threads of broken promises.
And, the truth that lies buried
Beneath the pavement, forgotten, rotting.
On your streets that are your mouths that swallow hope whole
The world spins around her like a butcher's wheel—
but she doesn't look away.
Doesn’t blink.
You tell her to smile,
but she shreds that too,
a map to nowhere in her teeth,
a galaxy of blood.
You call it history—
but it's just the dust in her throat
and the light that flickers when she breathes.
Don't ask her to dance with you.
The floor is on fire and her boots are made of revolution.
She does not bow,
she stands
and the earth cracks beneath her.
You see her?
Good.
But your eyes—
they are not enough.
The moon?
Her reflection,
a mirror to the fractured silence she shouts from.
Watch her rise.
You can't drown what was never meant to stay under.
The cage rattles.
She sings,
and you call it: chaos!
It’s not chaos.
It’s creation.
You hear her?
No?
Good, you’re not supposed to.
She speaks in tongues you can’t translate.
She doesn’t need your translation.
You tell her to be quiet,
but her silence?
It’s an inflicted weapon.
You’re afraid of what you cannot hear.
She spits into the sun,
and it flinches.
A flicker of light trying to burn her back
but she wears shadows like a second skin.
You thought she’d fade,
but she tastes the sky and it’s sour,
a memory of men who thought they owned it.
The sky is now a bruise, bloated and waiting to burst.
Her mouth is a graveyard,
her teeth, shards of forgotten gods,
and when she smiles,
it’s not for you.
It’s for the wind that hums like a hungry ghost
sweeping through the ruins of what they thought they built.
You called it civilization—
she calls it a coffin with a velvet lining.
She turns it inside out and wears it like a cape.
Who needs wings when you’ve got roots
that drag the earth with them?
She bleeds ink and fire,
writes in the veins of her mother,
her grandmother,
her great-grandmother,
and each word is a knife that slices through time,
through your idea of time,
through your neat little boxes.
She gnaws on the neck of silence
and swallows the dark whole.
You told her to speak sweetly,
so she carved a tongue from razor blades
and let it taste the salt of their tears.
She wears the pulse of a thousand broken promises
and hums through the ruins of your comfort.
Her breath is made of glass shards
and razor blades dipped in the blood of gods you’ve forgotten.
She doesn't ask for your forgiveness
because she knows better—
you don’t have the hands for it.
She doesn’t make sense.
She never will.
And that’s the part that cuts you the deepest—
she refuses to be understood.
You want her to fit in your neat little boxes,
to wear the labels you’ve stitched into the seams of your own rage.
But she is the thunder
before your storm
and the one that eats your sky.
You don’t see her—
not really.
You never have.
You only see the idea of her,
and the idea of her burns you.
She is not your idea.
She is the nightmare you wake up screaming to,
the one you wish would leave,
but she is already in the walls.
So scream,
scream all you want.
She isn’t listening.
She doesn’t need to.
She is not the one who’s been silent.
You have been.
She is the scar on the horizon where the sun should have risen,
a thousand forgotten cries stitched into her skin like tattoos of violence,
each one a story you never bothered to hear.
Her body—
a map of erasure,
the imprints of every hand that reached
and tore,
twisted,
pulled,
and never let go.
She is the hollow echo
of what was stolen,
the thing you covered with sweet words
while her blood watered the roots of this world.
They called it conquest,
but it was theft.
Every inch of her was mined,
plundered in the name of something holy—
a religion that didn’t see her,
a god that never whispered her name.
Her hands were shackled with the promises of progress,
her mouth gagged with the silence of centuries.
Still, she spoke,
but her voice was a thunder you couldn’t understand,
a crack in the sky where the storms of history rained down.
You marked her,
branded her like cattle,
and called it civilization.
But her scars?
They are pins,
stars on boards etched in blood
that trace the journey of every woman
who was never allowed to breathe without submission.
She is the soil turned to ash
beneath the boots of your armies,
the crushed hands of those who built your temples
and never saw the light.
Her pain was the oil you burned
to light your mansions,
and you drank from the well
of her tears without ever seeing her thirst.
She is the stone you tried to carve
into something you could own,
and when you failed,
you burned her body
and called it the funeral pyre of progress.
You think you erased her.
But her name is the soil you stand on,
the air you breathe,
the pulse you ignore in your chest.
She is the dark beneath the skin of your city,
the rust in the gears of your machines,
the echo that shatters your glass towers
and makes your foundation tremble.
She is the truth you bury in your backyard
while you laugh at your own reflection.
Her revolution doesn’t need a flag.
Her revolution doesn’t need a name.
Her revolution is in the cracks,
the fractures where you never looked,
the silence that grows louder the more you ignore it.
She will rise,
but not from the ashes you think you’ve left behind.
She rises from the things you refuse to see,
from the hands that were never allowed to touch
and the mouths that were forced to swallow their own rage.
And when she opens her eyes,
they will burn brighter than the lies
you built your empire on.
Those lies of yours that hang in the air like smoke,
choking the breath out of the world.
The air smells like burnt paper and broken promises.
She is already here,
and you will never stop her.
She is the skin scraped raw by the weight of forgotten years,
the quiet ache beneath every cry
that was never acknowledged.
She is the broken foundation of your “progress,”
the cracks you erased to keep your structure upright.
Progress by roads that are paved with her stolen teeth.
Her breath is made of all the lost moments,
and when she inhales,
the world shudders in regret.
But you never see her—
you only see the shadow of your own reflection
dancing in the chaos.
You thought she was a whisper.
But her whisper is the sound of walls cracking
under the weight of your good intentions.
Every word she spoke was another bruise
you inflicted in the name of change.
Her body is not your project,
it was never meant to be your territory.
You used her with your systems,
pulled her apart with your rules,
stole the fire from her eyes
and made her bow to your vision.
The laws of your sovereign are chains,
forged in silence, rattling with every step she takes.
You stole from her with your ideals,
and made her work for the dreams of others
who never bothered to ask.
You planted your flag in her soil
and watched her bend
while you stood back and called it progress.

Your progress is nothing but a slow rot,

eating through the skin of the earth.

She is the girl you buried under piles of indifference,
the one you swore to forget,
the one you buried without her story.
But herstory was never meant to be erased.
It is the cry that will break your walls
and turn your structures to dust.
She is the cracks in your perfect image,
the fracture in your narrative,
the one you tried to suppress
and thought you could silence
with every promise you never kept.
She doesn’t need your forgiveness,
she doesn’t need your pity.
She’s already swallowed your excuses
and spit out your blame.
She wears the skin of every woman
who was told to shrink,
to stay still,
to fall into line,
to stay quiet under your gaze.
But her skin is not fragile anymore—
it is the shield made from every setback,
every slap,
every taunt,
every prejudice,
it's thick with rage
you thought would break her,
the shield that turns every hurt
into something stronger.
You tried to bury her with your silence,
but she is the echo that rattles your walls.
She is the cry that follows you in your sleep
and tugs at your breath.
You thought you quieted her,
but every lock you put on her voice
only made her words bolder,
like a warning you couldn’t ignore.
Her fire is the storm you never anticipated,
the wave you never prepared for,
the light that will expose everything you’ve hidden.
She will not be the calm after the storm—
she will the storm now.
She will become the spark that lights the match
and burns away the things you thought would last,
you proudly built on her backs,
your property.
your world.
You cannot control her,
you cannot erase her,
you cannot make her forget.
She is the truth coded deep
in the fabric of your structure,
and when she decrypts,
it won’t be with your permission,
it won’t be with your consent.
It will be with the power
of every person
who has ever been held back,
ever been forgotten,
ever been silenced
and told to be still.
But she will not be still.
She will never be still again.
Her rage is not a roar—
it is the flicker of a dying candle
just before the flame gives out.
It is the last breath you take
before the tide pulls you under
and you realize
she was never drowning.
She was always the water.

- Oizys.

Some thoughts: Okay, happy International Women's Day. Things are still bad, in a simmering stage after a lava explosion. It might get worse, who knows... At home, I am talking about. Of course. I kept thinking about writing something, a poem maybe, for today. But, I was unable to track down a theme, a particular focal point to nail it. So, I went on with the wonky flow of my mind. And, this is it. My goal is the journey of fight. And, I am merely picking this day up to depict it. Throughout this journey, every fighter's battle is to impart the truth, the absolute truth that the way human life instils autonomy in you as a form of dignity in civilized society, the same way, that same human life instils that same level of autonomy in her as a form of dignity in civilized society. And, the struggle is of some people unable to swallow this pill. We have the date marked, celebrations organized but is your mindset aligned? That would be the question to ponder. When you ponder, you'll realize that if it has already aligned there would've been no need of marking such dates, celebrating such days. Since it is not, people glorify it to reach audience, seek people's support. Make it pink and pulpy and shiny. The gore is yet to touch you because you sit your rosy bubble of life. Such is the inequality in life.

International Women's Day, Maught, and Post-Rage Melancholy

04/05/2025

There is a Scottish word, maught. It means might. My father told us today over tea and some puffed rice. His organisation is giving its female employees an amount to spend on Women's Day, 8th of March. I often think, what will I do? What will I get on Women's Day as a woman? Even though I took a long journey to accept I have become a woman. Being a woman has become important to me more than ever. And I have grown closer to my mother. Is it a result of the former? Or is the former the result of this new closeness? Who knows which came first? I find it tautological. As mother and daughter, our talk, by and large, revolves around food. Not the surface-level dinner-table conversation. The hunger, the cooking, the process, the lack, the glut. We both are vegetarians in a family where some others are overt non-vegetarians. And some, covert. The hunger is so vicious, stuck in our chests forever. The cooking has bound us forever in the little soaked kitchen. Outside of which, we have no escape, so we cling on to each other. I often think how much strength she must have conjured up over the years to cook while keeping her hunger shut. How many scraps she must have had to gather to pay her debts to the glut. All while burdened with the responsibility of plenty. The lack that isn't lacking. The glut that isn’t gluttony. Because in a world that offers too much but never has enough—that is what being a woman is like. Could it be that Eve came out of her mother's rib after a long-drawn hunger stuck in there, a vortex is born? And Adam was angry.  He was angry because, after all, how could he, the first man, fall short of a rib? And so, he cursed her. Out of malicious frustration—a sort of tragic possessiveness. He cursed her to give birth from her belly, not from her ribs. And the rib was forever lost, buried under layers of flesh and blood, tangled up in a woman’s womb.  The belly, hopeless belly, on its knees, has to cradle, not the freedom of glut, but of the burden Adam chose to place. And that is, in all likelihood, why I took so long to accept being a woman. The world will never let us be (just) women. It will never free us from the weight of what it means to be womanly. Womanly—to be both a source of life and a symbol of sacrifice. A force of nature wrapped in skin. Cursed to be both tender and unbreakable? I wish this Woman's Day, not for a token of privilege, but for the space to be—unburdened, no qualifiers. Some space to lay this hollow one-rib-less chest bare. Let out this vortex of layers of glut and hunger without feeling like a culprit who released a poison in the city. Give up the echo of cursed expectations dragging me back into the kitchen of my ancestresses.

05/05/2025

I fell asleep writing all of this last night, cramped up in a corner. And woke up in my own pool of blood. The excruciating pain was no stranger, but its hellish outburst today was especially of Mark. It ended up being so bad, I gave into the despair and fell into medication. Oh, the magic of medication. It lets you live, numbly and dizzyingly and drowsily.

06/07/2025

The day was almost good. I don't think I ever had a second day of my periods without any pain. We all have a first. It was so good that it all felt like a dream. An illusion. Or, one of my fantasies. Retrospectively, I prayed it should have been one of those days. Because what followed this lack of pain left a scar so deep, broke a chasm so hard. There is no point of return. The lack of pain brought the flurrying rage that was simmered by being unheard, spat at, humiliated, and disrespected. The rage burst in nerves and defiled my silence. Silence that was embedded in every bit of my woman, my mother's woman, my sister's woman. That look on his face, his voice, and his manipulation churned my stomach and accelerated my bile. The audacity, the gall of him, declaring that I had no right. We had no right. It is the singularity and open-endedness in his statement that forced us to lay our odium bare for him. It is the threat of us having no right but also, in the same breath, the accusation of us being the upper hand. It is the threat of burning us down but also, in the same breath, an accusation of us doubling down on him. It is the threat of stripping us of anything we have but also, in the same breath, the accusation of us taking everything away from us. It is the threat of being a disenfranchised daughter in his life but also, in the same breath, an accusation of never having been enough, of never having measured up to some invisible standard he sets, an expectation that seems to shift and bend with his moods. It is the threat of erasing us, yet the accusation of us trying to erase him, as if we are both the victim and the villain in the same twisted dance. It is the threat of silence, the absence of warmth or presence, yet the accusation that we seek to silence him, to remove his voice from the narrative of our lives, as if we ever had the power to begin with. The evening branded a paradox on us, mother and daughters—we are disempowered, never allowed to fully exist in the way we wish—neither here nor there, neither fully seen nor fully free. The whole night, each breath felt like we were swimming in the tension of impossible expectations, and each blink towards sleep felt like a betrayal, no matter which side we turned.

See, the thing about a woman speaking up is it changes every card on the table. In this time or era, if she endures and silently complains while sobbing and enduring some more, you will still have the whole room to acknowledge her, patronise her, guide her, and make her endure some more. But if she speaks up. Oh. The entire room shifts and turns, and suddenly she is the problem. She is the disruption. She is the threat to the carefully curated peace, the one who dares to unravel the illusion of compliance, of quiet suffering. In her voice, they hear not the plea for understanding but a challenge to the status quo, a defiance that makes them uncomfortable, makes them question their own complicity. She becomes the loud, the aggressive, the unreasonable, the one who can never be satisfied. And yet, in her silence, she is expected to be grateful for the crumbs of acknowledgement, to be content with the scraps of respect that are given to her, as though her worth is only validated in her suffering, in her submission. But when she speaks, when she stands tall, she is no longer the meek recipient of pity. She becomes the one who demands, who claims what is rightfully hers. The room no longer welcomes her voice but fears it, for it exposes the cracks in their own carefully built narratives. And in this fear, they try to silence her, not because she is wrong, but because her truth is too loud, too raw, and too real for them to ignore.

Standing up for yourself as a woman is a double-edged sword. On one side, it’s an act of liberation, a reclaiming of your voice, your autonomy, your power. It’s the breaking of chains, the finally vomiting out of the ancient rage that binds you to expectations, to roles, to histories written by others. It’s the moment when you decide that your worth isn’t up for negotiation and that you won’t be silenced any longer. In standing up, you are showing the world that you will no longer be defined by its narrow and shrewd ways, but by the expansive nature of your own truth. But on the other side, that same act of standing up is almost always like a knife pointed towards your own belly. You are stamped as "too much," "too loud," "too demanding"—as though your assertiveness is an affront to the world. It’s a tightrope walk because the very qualities that are celebrated in them are seen as threatening in us. The same strength that would earn them admiration might lead to our vilification. The same self-assurance that’s revered in others might be twisted into accusations of arrogance, aggression, or selfishness when it comes from you. It’s exhausting, this delicate act. To be strong, but not too strong. To be independent, but not isolated. To speak your truth, but not be twistedly perceived as a threat. And even when you walk this razor-thin line, you’re left wondering: If I’m punished for being myself, is it worth standing tall at all?

My mother's words brought a balm for these cut-inflicting thoughts. She said this was long overdue. She was shocked; I could scream in front of him. She remarked, My screams were just like his, and that would be his rude awakening. She also said this might bring forth a change. She has always been a hopeful realist. And, I think, that is what kept her going through all those days and all those nights, all those slaps and all those screams. But my stomach keeps churning. I keep thinking, what if it gets worse? Because, perhaps, that's how life has been for me. Whenever something bad happens, it is followed by some more horrible happenings and then some more with the seven circles of hell freezing over me.

I lay on my bed in a dark and hot room beside my mother. I searched for her palm while I was splitting into two. One, desperate for comfort, for the familiar warmth of her hand, yearning for the simple reassurance that she would hold me steady, grounding me in a world that felt like it was crumbling. That part of me, still a child in many ways, wanted to sink into the softness of her presence, to feel protected from the chaos swirling both inside and outside of me. Scared, shivering, and feverish child me. The other, sharp and restless, like a larva coming out of a cocoon, itching to break free, was fighting against everything she endured—against the silence we had both learnt to endure, against the passive submission that had become a second skin. This part of me felt suffocated by the unspoken, trapped in the weight of expectations that came with being her daughter, being a woman, being expected to keep things together even when I was falling apart. It was as though my very being was being torn between the need for her and the need to escape with her, to break free from the cycle of quiet acceptance that had defined my life. Our lives. I reached for her hand, and for a fleeting moment, her warmth was unsettlingly welcome—but even then, the internal conflict raged within me. In that touch, I felt the comfort of familiarity and the pain of knowing that, just like her, I might one day come to accept the very things I was rebelling against now.

Anyway, happy International Women's Day in advance for us. Could there be a more poetic ending than this?

- Oizys.

[The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks]