Who am I?

Mother

I owe a lot of who I am to my family. My mother taught me how to be opinionated and how to put my family before myself. She is loud and obnoxious, both words that can easily describe me as well. She moved around a lot as a kid because her dad was an actor, so her only constant company were her sisters. She never dated and I doubt she partied. She got engaged to my dad the day they met (one of the beauties of arranged marriages) and they married soon after. She was in her early twenties. Then she left everything she had ever know to come to a new country with my father. And they made it work. She had my brother a year later and me two years after that. Her entire life has been about her family, in fact she rarely thinks of herself. She never complains, actually only last week when a family member pointed it out did she realize that she never knew what it felt like to really live life solely for yourself. But this is the life she chose and she doesn't seem to have any regrets in that department. My mother thinks I don't understand or that I'm blind to the cloud of sadness that she carries around. My dad works, my brother and I go to school and have clubs and sports. My mother? She stays at home... alone. She cooks everyday and cleans and drives my brother and I to and from school and classes and gives rides to our friends if they need them. She drives to school in the middle of the day to bring us hot lunch or give us something we forgot. But she doesn't have a life outside of us.

Only recently has she started to become closer to the mothers of my brother's friend's and this is after almost six years of knowing them. She has maybe one person that she genuinely calls her friend. Everyone else that she is close to is a blood relation.

Growing up in India gives one this "family before everything" mindset, and it's one my mother never got over. It makes sense, your family is the only thing that will care for you when your sick, but should it really be to the point that you don't have an identity without them? My mother is a talented woman but you wouldn't know it because she doesn't have a circle or connections. She's very simple. She wants the best for her family and nothing else. Everything she does leads back to us. She wants our time, she wants us to talk to her, to hug her, to tell her we love her.... To make her feel less lonely, because we are all that she has. But when you live in a country that promotes and attitude that says "I before we" my brother and I are judged upon our ability to hold our own in society, to be successful in every way. To prepare for that we study, and practice our time away. We spend so much time trying to make a future that we forget how to fill the silence after awhile.

My mother has sacrificed her whole life for her family... And she probably will continue to. She is loving and caring and beautiful. But when I grow up... I don't want to end up like her, at home alone all day, with children who are prone to forgetting my value. My mother has taught me a lot. She taught me how to clean and care and prioritize. She taught me how to value the important things in life and how to take the difficult things in stride. She taught me to never worry about what other people are thinking and she taught me to choose my own way. And I choose to be smart. I choose to not depend on others. I choose independence and freedom and fun.  I choose confidence. I choose to recognize my boundaries and never cross them. I choose to make memories. I choose family; whether they be my blood or my choice. I choose balance. I choose a life in which putting family first doesn't mean making them my only.