Holding Her Inside Me

 "Did we become doctor"?

"Why do you seem to be a housewife"?

She asked, her voice heavy and full of fear.

"I am doing pre-med, I am working so hard," she continues

"What happened?"

I felt something heavy in my chest.

I looked at her, and that's when I noticed she was fading.

"Why aren't you answering?" Her voice softened.

"I cracked the medical test and took admission in college," I said slowly.

 But...,"

I stopped.

"But what?" she asked 

 "I was struggling every day to keep you alive. I didn't feel the happiness I was supposed to feel I was supposed to feel"

She didn't understand 

“I studied so hard in my final year…”

“But I was managing marriage… exams…
and you…”

I looked at her.

“You were almost gone by then.”

“Every day… You were fading,”
I whispered.
“And I was trying to hold you…
and study at the same time.”

“My whole university life…
I was struggling.”

“With studies…”
“With you disappearing…”

My voice felt distant now.

Like I was remembering someone else’s life.

“Grades were low, university was a strom and then my parents got me married.”

She looked up instantly.

“When?”

“Final year.”

Her expression changed.

“How close to exams?”

I swallowed.

“Twenty days before papers.”

She didn’t speak this time.

“After marriage… I was alone,”
I said.

“I didn’t understand what was happening to me.”

My voice felt empty.

“Twenty days before my final exams, I was married…
still trying to hold you inside me.
Then the first child came, and the second…
and responsibilities kept growing.”

"You were gone completely by then."

She was just a faint outline now.

“I was blank,” I whispered.

“Completely blank.”

“Nine years passed like that.”

“Then I tried again.”

Her eyes… barely there… looked at me.

“I worked so hard for FCPS.”

“But…”

I smiled faintly.

“Responsibilities didn’t leave.”

“And I…”

I paused.

“I was still not fully present.”

Silence again.

“I couldn’t get residency.”

That was the first time my voice didn’t shake.

It just… accepted it.

“So I left it.”

“I left the idea of that career.”

I looked at her.

Her eyes were wide, still flickering like a candle in the wind,
and I could see the question burning in them: What now?

“I’m working on myself,” I said softly.
“Filling the scars…
learning to be a happy mother,
a person full of life,
so that one day you—and I—can live without the weight of all this.”

She didn’t say anything.
She just blinked slowly,
like she was letting the words settle inside her,
and for the first time,
I felt her pause…
not fading.

She was listening.
Really listening.

When I Met My 15-Year-Old Self

In the Hope of Being Heard

When I Met My 15-Year-Old Self

 I slid the curtain. She was standing outside the window. 

It took me a minute to recognize her—those curious, restless eyes.

How could I forget her? A fifteen-year-old with extremely expressive eyes, a girl who believed in idealism in everything.

She looked at me, curious, almost suspicious.
“Who are you?” she asked.

I smiled, with tears in my eyes.
“I am you… Twenty-two years later.”

She laughed. “That’s impossible.”

“Not really,” I said softly. “You and I are just separated by time.”

She kept looking at me for several minutes, quiet, questioning eyes, as if she couldn’t believe that I could be her. 

She had never thought she would turn out to be like me after 22 years. 

She studied me carefully, searching for something. She expected to find something, perhaps greatness, perhaps perfection, perhaps a life that proved all her dreams had come true.

But what she saw was indeed different; her talking eyes couldn’t tell me what she was thinking.

“You look strong,” she said slowly, “but not in the way I imagined.”

“Did we make the difference we thought?” she asked, her voice full of hope.

“No,” I said gently, “not the way we thought.”

Her face fell slightly.

She leaned closer.
“Did we at least become successful?”

I paused.

“I fought many battles,” I replied. “But I didn’t win all of them.”

Her face changed.
There was fear now, the same fear she had always carried but never admitted.

“I was always scared of failing,” she whispered.

“I know,” I said. “And the truth is… we did fail. More than once.”

She looked down, as if something inside her had cracked.

“But listen,” I added gently, “those failures didn’t destroy us. They shaped us. The scars are still there… but so is the strength.”

She looked at me again, deeper this time.

She looked at me as if she knew everything we had lost along the way.

And for the first time,
Her eyes weren’t full of dreams.

They were full of understanding, yet still curious-curious to know why I wasn't the person she imagined.

What had happened in those 22 years? What had shaped me into this? Why was I so calm, even though I hadn't become the person she thought I would be?

"So tell me what happened to us?" She asked gently, a quiet patience in her voice that hadn't been there before, as if she wanted to hear the story without judgment.

Holding Her Inside Me

In the Hope of Being Heard

In the Hope of Being Heard

Whenever I see the world, many thoughts flow through my mind. 

I have a lot of questions about everything, about life, about everything that happens around me, and sometimes even answers to the questions people raise—but they can’t hear my voice.

The questions raised on social media, questions that arise in a space far from me, some development that I want to discuss, but I have no medium. Sometimes I write my thoughts on simple paper, but they get lost. Other times, I keep them in my mind, hoping to discuss them with someone who understands.

I think about things like why we learn so much about honesty in school, but don’t practice it in the real world.
Where does the gap lie between learning and executing?

Why do people know what is right, yet still choose what is easy or beneficial for them?

Is it the system, the environment, or something inside us that changes when we step out of school and into real life?

Most of the time, I don’t find anyone to discuss them with. People today seem to have very limited areas of discussion—they don’t like deep conversations.

People avoid deep conversations because talking about feelings, beliefs, and emotions requires energy and courage. It can be emotionally draining. Sometimes, social conditioning encourages surface-level talk instead, so people are used to staying light. Others fear judgment, want to blend in, or simply don’t have fully formed ideas to share.

SO my thoughts feel suffocated in my mind. They want to be heard.

Writing them here feels like someone is listening. Maybe someone will like them, maybe not—but maybe someday I will find someone to discuss my thoughts with.

Maybe someday I will find someone who thinks like me through this blog.

That’s why I am here—to share my thoughts, in the hope of being heard.

When I Met My 15-Year-Old Self

Holding Her Inside Me