“Wow you’re lucky that you are the only child of your parents.”; “You must have been pampered a lot.”  The worst tag ever. So easy for people to generalize and judge others. They believe what they see or hear when it comes to judging other people, but they won’t believe that they are buying real gold while shopping jewelry even if the jeweler guaranteed it twenty seven million times. Irony of life.

My mother was an extraordinary student when she was young. She had won hundreds of medals while in school and medical college. Friends and family loved her heart-warming smile. She was married to my father when she was a doctor practicing medicine. She brought me to this world. Everything was perfect but then the plot was twisted. She was diagnosed of schizophrenia. She fell into depression. My parents used to fight every single day as far as I remember. She became violent and my father left me and her when I was 6. She was suicidal. She left her job. We started living with her parents. I never felt the absence of my father or realized the fact that I have a schizophrenic and depressed mother as a kid- all because of the tender love and protection by my grandparents. My mother tried to contact my father as she was improving but my father did not talk to her. This worsened her. My mother was no more the person I spent nights listening to stories. My mother was no more “my mother”.

I belong to a culture where a married woman living with her parents and not with her husband,is seen with suspicious eyes. I used to pretend at school when friends and teachers were curious about the fact that I do not live with my father- I used to lie that my father works somewhere else and my mother works in this city so I live with my grandparents. And then… the divorce bomb thrown by my father- My grandparents lost all hope for my mother’s recovery. I started understanding things as I grew up a bit as a teenager. I secretly listened to my grandparents’ conversations and realized that I don’t have a normal family like all my classmates and friends talked about. Divorce is still not acceptable in my culture. Everyone in the neighborhood started talking about me and my mother and asked stupid questions. I accepted it as my fate and started moving on. Everything was better.

And then… out of the frying pan, into the fire. I was diagnosed with pulmonary tuberculosis and doctors said I had a very large pleural effusion. The colleagues of my aunt living in the US, who herself is a doctor, on seeing the reports; said I am dying. My mother did not react to the fact that I was sick. Perhaps she was so engrossed in her imaginary world that she did not believe in reality. I improved miraculously within 12 days. God exists. I was completely cured in 6 months. Meanwhile I had no communication with my father. I had many changes in life. All good ones. I met my best friend forever and we talked about everything- he is very understanding and caring. I am really grateful for him and my grandmother. My grandmother also tried to compensate my parents’ love. But no one can replace them. My father started talking to me via texts and calls. But he was a total stranger to me. And will always be.

My mother used to break things and beat me up when I was a kid for no reason. But now she has stopped physically harming me. Now she shouts at me, abuses me for no reason at all and hallucinates and sometimes tried to harm my grandmother. She does not pay for the stuff I buy and when I ask her why, she says ‘ask your father why he brought you to life.’ Everyday I wait for her to reply when I say her ‘I love you’ or wish her ‘good morning’ or ‘good night’ and she either stays silent or abuses me. I make cards and bring flowers for her and she throws them. I understand a schizophrenic person has no feelings and feel helpless. She does not take proper medication and my grandparents have become too old to run after her for taking prescribed drugs. She does not talk to anyone. She sits all day, hallucinates and does nothing other than eating or sleeping. Such a loving and beautiful woman turned into a piece of flesh. I hope one day she will be my mother again. I am very confused regarding my father and I hope I will understand as I grow up. I don’t know why God has done this to my mother but I am grateful that at least she is alive.  There are many children whose parents’ have died. Their pain is just another level.

I get very irritated when few of my classmates complain of their parents. And nowadays most of the teenagers do. I mean come on! You are really lucky if your mother loves you, listens to you and replies to you, scolds you for your good, cooks for you or your father pays for you, drives you to school, you are really lucky if your parents take your responsibility and don’t take that for granted as there are many kids whose parents don’t. If you have parents who are ‘normal’, you are really lucky and never let them go.