November 13th 2024.
Growing up in my home country in the early 2000s, I had to face the harsh realities of war on a daily basis. Bombs and gunfire were a part of my daily life as a child, and I had become desensitized to it. It was a coping mechanism, a way to protect myself from the constant fear and danger that surrounded me.
But the one person who I thought I could always turn to was my mother. She was my rock, my protector. However, everything changed when we moved to the UK a few years ago. As soon as I walked through the front door, my mother's face dropped. It was like she didn't even recognize me anymore.
She immediately called me a slut and started hitting me, something she had never done before. I was scared and confused. I was barely a teenager at the time, and I couldn't understand why my mother was behaving this way. It turned out my supposed crime was that I had plucked my eyebrows.
In the war-torn Asian country I am from, eyebrows are seen as a mask of protection until you are married and your husband becomes your protector. But in the UK, where I was trying to fit in with my friends at school, perfectly shaped eyebrows were the norm. I didn't realize how angry this would make my mother, who had jumped to the conclusion that I was dating or planning to marry. It was the beginning of the end of our relationship.
My mother and I had always been close, but this incident created a rift between us that we could never bridge. And it wasn't just this incident. My father, who was a strong and capable man, was tragically murdered when I was just a child. My mother, who was standing up for women's rights in our country, was persistently targeted, and our family was in constant danger.
Alongside this, I rarely went to school because education for girls was not a priority in my home country. But my father's death was the final straw for my mother. She knew she had to get us out of the country to keep us safe. So she made the difficult decision to leave everything behind and bring us to the UK to join her brother and parents who lived there.
I'm not exactly sure how my mother managed it, but she did. We had to first go to Pakistan to get visas before boarding a plane to the UK. It was a scary and uncertain time, but my mother showed incredible strength and resilience. She had lost her home, her reputation, her career, and her husband, but she was determined to protect her four children on her own.
But the move to the UK was not without its challenges. My siblings and I faced bullying at school because we were different. We had "weird" lunches, different accents, and came from a country with a reputation. And while my mother had brought us to a place of safety, she was struggling herself. She would spend all day in her room, living in constant fear. It was like I didn't even recognize her anymore.
I longed to fit in with my peers, especially in my mid-teens. I wanted to be "western" like the girls around me. But my mother had different expectations, and I felt like I was leading a double life. At school, I socialized, talked to boys, and wore makeup, all of which my mother would disapprove of. It was a lot of pressure, on top of the undiagnosed PTSD and the loss of my father and home, which ultimately led to severe depression.
I tried to talk to my mother about how I was feeling, but she dismissed me and blamed me for not following the rules. I began to blame myself and ended up in the hospital multiple times after attempting to take my own life. The final time, my mother found an innocent text exchange with a boy on my phone and accused me of losing my virginity or being pregnant. It was a breaking point for me, and I couldn't go back home.
That's when social services got involved, and I was first placed with my grandparents before being given a bed in a psychiatric hospital. I spent a year there before being put into care through a therapeutic fostering agency. It was a difficult time for me, but the staff were incredible, and they gave me the love and support I desperately needed. After a year, I was placed with a foster family who eventually became my new family.
They showed me love and acceptance, something I had not experienced in a long time. With their support, I was able to finish my education and go on to university to study psychology. Foster care changed my life and gave me a fresh start. And now, as an adult, I have even reached out to my mother, hoping to rebuild our relationship.
It's not easy, and we have a lot of work to do, but I will never give up on her. Despite everything, I still love her, and I know deep down, she loves me too. I'm hopeful that with time and help, she will come to terms with the trauma she has endured and we can heal together. I'm not angry with her; I'm just sad that she couldn't fight for me when I needed her the most. But I will always be grateful for the new family I have found through foster care. They have shown me that love and support can come from unexpected places, and I hope more people will consider becoming foster parents to make a difference in the lives of those who have been through so much.
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