Yusra

Chapter 1: Alone

They said my name means "relief"....but I don't know what that word means. Because I have never experienced relief. I am left in my corner staring at four walls while a war rages in my very mind. Meanwhile, another war rages outside my mind. Mom and Dad. I will spare you the gory details and muffled insults from the next room. But you can smell hatred from our gates if you were to pass by our rented house.
  You may ask how is that battle related to the one raging in my head? Everything. Everything because my parent's love and marriage were my lifeline, my peace and maybe my relief. My very entry into this world was a war, it was a month and half of hell for mom in her final stages of pregnancy. So you can imagine her relief when I emerged healthy and bouncy after a condition that threatened the life of mother and child. To my doctor I was a miracle to my mum I was her relief. But a battle that should have ended at childbirth was only beginning. You see I am not an only child but I was the odd one out of my three siblings. Not only was I the chubbiest of the three, but also the most introverted and least fun. I was a cliché of a child whose best friends were her parents. But you see when your two best friends become enemies, it's no longer friendly. I am not in the business of taking sides, so I'll save you the details of who did who wrong. Although, I'll have to choose a side eventually.  So, the marital war raged on and my mom became an enemy and expressed displeasure at almost everything I said or did. I don't blame her, at least not anymore. At that point in her life, nothing gave her pleasure anymore,not her cheating, abusive husband (Oops...I guess so let the cat out of the bag) or her nuisance of a child who sort approval for everything even if it was just lacing her own damn shoes and yet she wouldn't obey simple instructions. You see in my mom's eyes, after a long day at work and school, she expects to come home to see that her children have done their duties as she had taught them to, so she could get some peaceful rest but all she got were complaints about me from my elderly cousin and my sister, yet my brother and said sister were fine (She's going to apologize for the unfair punishments later in life). Aside my dad's disappearing acts, he tried to stay a dad to me...or maybe it was the other way round. Because I never questioned my dad about his actions. To me, he just looked as much alone as I felt,  as did my mom, but while my mom pushed me away, unknowingly, my dad kept me as close as he could, until he and my mom eventually separated.
So with my brother and sister doing only God knows what and ignoring me as much as possible, my parents were in their own war bubble. I sat in solitude, my only consolation being the books I read and the music I fell back on. And when it wasn't enough, I cried myself to sleep, praying to the only God who could see me...Alone.