If asked to sum up my mother’s essence, I’d say, “she’s free”. And in making peace with my loss, I now feel free, too.
When I was 11, my mum left our house. Her unhappy marriage to my dad had finally come to a head and I was devastated. I cried myself to sleep every night for three years clutching a lotus figurine from her own childhood that she had given me.
This was a best-case scenario: she had moved only 15 minutes away, I saw her every week, she made painstaking efforts to ease the transition. My little sister Vishva and my dad were always with me.
Even still, this loss impacted me deeply. My weeks were defined by this transition. For the first half of the week, I lived in our newly-quiet family home, grieving the loss of my mum’s presence. In the second half of the week, I stayed at her place, clinging to her warmth, until it was time to leave all over again.
I knew my parents did not have a happy marriage, yet I couldn’t comprehend her departure. Every evening after school I would lie in bed and remember the comforting sound of her around the house: loading the dryer, her footsteps as she carried the clean laundry to fold in the living room. It all haunted me.
My parents had an arranged marriage in India and immediately moved across the globe to the United States – far from everything they’d ever known. They found themselves in a partnership defined by misunderstanding and disagreements, which exacerbated the painful distance between them and their homeland. Years later, I found myself haunted by the potency of my childhood grief and terrified of making the same mistakes she did. It’s taken me 15 years to finally find some peace with it. One thing I cannot deny is the respect I have for her, and women like her.
“Expectations for heterosexual women, especially mothers, are suffocating. They are expected to be completely devoted to their children at the expense of their own identities.”
During that time, runaway women became a fascination. They were everywhere: a college friend who got married after graduating confessed on a winter walk that she yearned to leave her husband and travel the world. My neighbour, as I lay in the garden on an autumn day, shared her itch to explore the country with me, and leave behind her husband and three kids.
The fantasy is constantly played out on the screen too. Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter is centred on a mother wracked with guilt having left her daughters with their father so she could invest time in herself and career. As I child, I watched Because of Winn-Dixie with awe, mystified at how a little girl just like me could survive a childhood so alone after her mother leaves.
The commonness of this experience leaves me in awe. Why do so many women run away – or at least long to – from their lives? It’s a reality that we rarely talk about, and when we do, often with judgement. Expectations for heterosexual women, especially mothers, are suffocating. They are expected to be the perfect balance of strict and liberal, ever-present for their families, and completely devoted to their children at the expense of their own identities.
“She was subject to criticism and interrogations when now I realise, she should have been praised for her courage and resolve. She was doing the impossible.”
Do we reserve the same vitriol for men who yearn to learn more about themselves and the world? No. Men are praised as good fathers when they are present in their home lives, even better if they engage with their spouses and children beyond finances.
My dad was often absent from my life – caught up in an exhilarating career as a young businessman in America. He would leave for work early in the day and come home at night, often when we had finished dinner and I worshipped him for his conventionality. Later, I realised a part of the reason I was so proud of his success was because it validated my need to be seen in a community tucked away on the coast of Maine that often did not see me – white and wealthy.
There, we were so far away from our community in India. When news broke out about my mother’s departure of the marriage, my family’s reactions were a mix of despondency and indignation. They cried, “what about the children? Give him another chance!”
She was subject to criticism and interrogations when now I realise, she should have been praised for her courage and resolve. She was doing the impossible – something so many women in India and around the world are unable to do – prioritising herself.
Then, one summer during college when my mum and I were travelling to visit our loved ones in India, I asked her if anyone in our family had ever had a happy marriage. After some thought, she responded, “No. I don’t think so.” This single conversation took me years to process.
How could so many of the incredible women in our family be stuck in unhappy – or at best, bearable – relationships. Who would they be if they were not stuck? These questions stayed with me, it was a paralysing source of anxiety every time I was in a heterosexual relationship and created an overwhelming urge to flee at the whisper of one. I was terrified of getting caught in the same trap.
“Living out the questions of “why do women stay?” and “why do women run away?” helped me to see my mother as fully human.”
I took the choice to finally process this part of my childhood in therapy, slowly picking up the broken pieces of my child-self that had been torn apart by the breakage of my family. I turned inward and listened to my child-self’s sorrow. Then I turned outward and listened to my mother’s wisdom.
From the beginning, she told me that she left not only for herself but so that her two daughters would see that they didn’t have to stay in an unhappy relationship. I started to open my eyes: at college nearly all my friends had unconventional families: divorced parents, single parents, parents in queer relationships. Suddenly my story of divorce didn’t feel as othering as before.
Living out the questions of “why do women stay?” and “why do women run away?” helped me to see my mother as fully human. Finally, I was able to hold her decision to leave alongside the devastating impact it had on my childhood self. Understanding my mother’s courage, mistakes, hardship, and liberation in leaving me and my sister freed me from the bonds of grief and loss. Of course, the loss is still a big part of me, but it no longer binds me. Rather, it simply is.
If asked to sum up my mother’s essence, I’d say, “she’s free”. And in making peace with my loss, I now feel free, too.
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