I can’t breath

Something feels heavy on my chest, I cannot breath…. I think I may need to cry but not sure about why…. it is a paradox, life is. I feel kinda numb yet full of rage, anger, sympathy, grief, resentment, and guilt. Yes, the good old familiar feeling of guilt. My therapist once told me guilt and shame are a choice, we choose to feel that way about certain situation. I think I kinda agree, but it also comes naturally, sorta sub-consciously. Maybe because it is so deeply rooted within us that we feel guilty without even knowing/processing the what and why of it.

About a couple of weeks ago, my sister told me my mom is in hospital, specifically cardiac care unit (CCU). She has some complication with her heart, and kidneys. I think it’d called pleural effusion. I’m very familiar with sick parents, before even knowing who I was as a kid or really knowing anything else , I surely knew what is high blood pressure. My mom has always had high blood pressure, and been taking different medications for it. As a very young kid, probably before going to school, I knew I shouldn’t stress her because it causes her BP soar through the roof. She had other health conditions as well, she had removed her thyroid glands and was taking medication for that. She also had arthritides in her knees, and arms. She always complained from pain in her body. I remember as a kid she’d ask me to use the iron to warm up towels and put on her legs/arms/wherever she had pain.

My mom and dad had me when they were very old. I think my mom was 43/44 and my dad was almost 60. This let me to get to know them when they were in different stages of their lives, time associated with pain, limited mobility, and already taking care of them in different capacity. When I was 15, I lost my dad. Losing him is a long story, and how it impacted me as a teenager….

My mom lost her mother when she was only 2, and was raised by her step-mom. From all I heard and witnessed later, her step-mom was kind and took care of the kids, hers and step-children. There is one memory that I heard from my mom frequently, and it goes like this; my mom was about 6/7 when the government health officials came to their village for vaccination, she was afraid of needles so she ran and hid to skip the vaccination. Though, her step-mom found her and gave a good spanking, as neighbours witnessed. My grandfather (whom I never met) hears about this, and the gossip came with it, that he put her kids under supervision of a brutal step-mother who beats the kids. He, as a man of honour, and respectful among his peers, got very upset and taught her new wife a lesson in form of physical abuse. The supposed lesson: to never ever raise her hand on his orphaned kids. And that’s last time my mom experienced her wrath. Though, she didn’t spend long in her father’s house. Her uncle was the governor/magistrate of their village, a man of power and wealth. He had a big house with multiple wives and several children, some were of the same age or younger than my mom. She spends most of her days in his house, helping with babysitting, and learning life skills from her aunties. She was dearly loved by one of her uncle’s wife, and saw the hard working spirit in my mom. They are still in touch to this day, with the cousins and the aunt, she is very old but alive.

She was very young when she met my dad. He lived in the same village, and his father was sort of a religious figure. However, my dad never really got hooked on the religion BS, and carved his own path as opposed to his brothers who followed their father’s legacy and became religious figures themselves, like priest or sth. He moved to a big city, and lived kind of a party life, and came back to the village at the age of 30, and asked my mom’s dad permission to marry her. She was 13/14 at the time, and her father was vehemently against their marriage because my dad wasn’t religious, not because of their age gap!!! With her uncle’s intervention, my grandpa came around the idea but he didn’t give my mom her original ID to register her marriage to my dad. In fact, she got her dead sister’s ID who was about 10-15 years older than her, the amount of shit my mom went through her life because of this age discrepancy b/w her looks and her ID’s age is ridiculous. I do feel bad for her, because she never knew her birthdate and her real age, something that her identity is literally tied to. Anywho, she got married to my dad at a very young age and shortly after they had the first kids of 11, though they lost two of them due to illness. This creates a MASSIVE age gap b/w me and my siblings, for example I am almost 28 and 24 years younger than my eldest sister and brother, respectively. They can literally be my parent, in fact my eldest sister has kids that are older than me…. She alongside my dad worked hard to provide for the kids. Even though, they had a big family, they made sure kids are taken care of. Especially, my mom made sure we got top notch education, she really valued education and made sacrifices for us kids to get the best education, and hopefully guarantee a good life/future. Though, her enthusiasm, as she puts it, got lower and lower by the time I was in school. Or maybe she was SO involved and overly occupied with my brother’s life, cause he was/is a shit head, that she could barely think about how I was doing in elementary/middle school. I basically learned that I better get a great education, or life will be a dark and limiting experience for me. I think it was around Grade 5, I told myself I am going to get my PhD and build my own life. It may come as a surprise goal for a young kid, but there are reasoning behind it. Let’s just say, I felt invisible in my house, sexually abused by my brother, and kinda navigating life on my own. Looking at my siblings’ lives and learning what choices I can make to build a free life, whatever it meant at the time…. Granted I grew up in Iran, so feminism or freedom/indepedence as it is discussed in western society, was not a thing. During this time, I grew absolutely angry with my mom, because she literally sacrificed our life for my brother. He was an absolute trouble-maker and was on a path to destroy his life and ours. And when he got married at the age of 18, his tumultuous married life with his wife and two kids (that they had in quick succession literally in the first two years of their marriage) because the focal point of my mom’s reason for living. Our lives was so unstable because of his frequent fights and marital dispute with his wife, that I cannot remember a month, heck a week, from ages 11 to 19 where we could be happy. There was always the fear that we may receive a call from him or his wife and the shit show of a life they were having together. These occurrence would put our family life, as in my mom, dad, myself, my sister and my brother who still lived at home, on pause. My mom would be extremely upset, as a result her BP be through the roof and I remember having the fear of losing her to a stroke. Then, she would go to their house which was in another city, 1000km away, to mediate and bring them back together. You can imagine how I felt as a teenager, invisible. So I navigate my life, even though my brother was married which meant my sexual abuser was out of home, his reign of terror continued to overshadow my life in different ways. As I grew older, I started to display my absolute hatred for him, and since he was the favourite child and the apple of my mom’s eye, I was always shut down. I did tell my mom about what he used to do to me b/w ages 6-11, things he forced me to do for his pleasure, but she decided, or maybe didn’t know how to handle it, to tell me I am wrong and don’t know what I am talking about. So I continue to endure the abuse, until he left our house.

Sometimes, I resent them for having me so late in their lives, because I had to take care of myself, or my siblings did if and when they were around. Being the youngest among 9 kids, it’s fair to say there were not much enthusiasm about me in the family. I remember my mom jokingly tell me the story of her efforts to abort her pregnancy with me, jumping off high wall, carrying heavy shit, etc. But I apparently was a stubborn kid and grab onto dear life as tightly as I could… If that even makes any sense whatsoever!