Maiden, Mother, Matron

My mother's kohl-lined eyes startle me and make my heart skip a beat, and I realize -
She is growing younger each day.

My mother, in my childhood memory, is wisps of herself: weary, hesitant, a child on each hip, good-wife, good-daughter-in-law, tired, obedient, and then, later, angry, frustrated, lost, sad in a way that made me feel ashamed, as if I was responsible for the trajectory of her life.

My mother, now, grows more real to me: her shoulders firmer, her back straighter, her laugh more quick to come at my silly jokes and naughty suggestions; she is stronger, more solid, pulling together the faded bits of herself and shaping herself into something more, into someone of her own.

My mother studies for exams and practises a new language she would never have considered; she leaves her house with a determined step even if it is only to go into the sun and read a book; she has learned to say "No," and it lends her strength

My mother belongs to herself, now, more than she ever did before. She is still wife, and mother, and daughter-in-law, but more than that, she is herself. She loves herself more, and I love her all the more for it - she is no longer the woman whose fate I feared for myself, but who has taken her fate and changed it to her own choosing.

One day, perhaps, I will be as strong as my mother, and take my own fate, and make it mine.

Sunny Days

Depression is a funny thing - well, not funny, more bitter and occasionally intriguing at how quickly it adapts to new situations, to ensure that it always has a place within you - even when you are quite sure that you should be free of it in the right circumstances.

On gray days, cold days, rainy days - it seeps into my bones, weighs me down, exhausts me such that even though I know a task is simple enough to execute, it becomes utterly overwhelming.

On warm days, sunny days, days heady with flower blossoms and sea-salt and the slow stirring of heat in one's blood... somehow it is these days, the ones I crave most, that carve a hole in my chest and fill me with grief and longing.

These are the days that I know I should feel lighter and brighter, when my fingers are curled around a cup of coffee and a book lays open in my lap.
And yet.
And yet.

These are the days when the anger that fuels me melts into sorrow instead, when the dust motes glittering in the sun taunt me with all the could-have-beens of my past and present and future, when all I can taste is grief at the loss of my own self.

"Take a walk," people suggest brightly. "Get some exercise! You'll feel better!" I walk, often, down Memory Lane, only to find myself lost again in hard concrete alleyways, littered with spiked recollections that jab through the rubber of my sneakers and into my flesh.

Walking over flaming coals is a feat to be admired, but walking into your memories and finding yourself doubled over, heaving, with only bile in your mouth - that is shameful, and embarrassing, and you must pretend it away lest people become tired of your theatrics.

So I will sit here, in the sunshine, and grip my coffee cup a little harder, and try to breathe a little bit slower, and fight back the salt and iron of grief and pain, and tell myself that if I wait a little longer, the sunshine will just be sunshine again.