** Please be aware there is a trigger warning for suicide and graphic details of it so if you find that triggering, it's best not to read this chapter!

I am always a daddy's girl. Whatever the situation is I'm always by my dad's side. It doesn't mean that I love my mom any less though, she was always the person I would go to her, ask her so many questions she would just smile tiredly at the end. It wasn't anything unusual, is it?

So I was so confused when one fine evening, after my afternoon nap I found my grandma banging the door where my mother was taking her nap, screaming to open the door.

I was 5 years old then, didn't know what was happening but I knew that something wasn't right. I never watched my grandma so stressed, she was on the brink of crying. I got up from the bed and changed my diaper. (I know, I used diapers for a long time)

When I came out of the bathroom, I swear to god I saw the most gruesome scene a five-year-old could see.

My mother was there, lying on the floor, motionless with a scarf draped around her neck. My grandma was crying, my grandpa just looked so broken as he held his wife. My father came, the whole neighborhood came, everyone was shouting, making chaos and pleading my motionless mother to open her eyes.

She never did.

So many people came in that home that day, asking my grandma what happened. She narrated the story with so many emotions.

I couldn't hear it though because I am a coward. Every time someone asked my grandma what happened I would just run off to somewhere else.

Somewhere dark, so that no one could watch me cry.

See, a damn coward.

But also I never reacted differently.

I never screamed, never shouted, never sobbed but I cried some silent tears.

At one moment I remember, my grandma asked me if she was dreaming or not. Asked me to pinch her to wake her up from that nightmare.

It was real though.

A real nightmare.

Anyways...

I narrated the entire tale above just to give you a reason or maybe an excuse as to why I felt what I felt.

From that evening, I became cold. Not to my family though.

I became cold to my deceased mother's memory.

She hung herself.

The reason, I never knew. Till this date.

She became my own personal demon.

My own mother.

Then I met my stepmother, and she was everything you want in a mother.

She was my school teacher, single my mother, and the most beautiful woman I can ever witness.

Nah, don't take it romantically.

But the feeling never faded, it grew until it poisoned my mind to think that my biological mother was bad.

I have so many open doors you know, but no closures. She was supposed to help me with my homework, she promised.

She didn't care that I would ever need her in my entire lifetime.

She didn't care that one day I will wonder, who was my mother?

She never gave me the chance to know her. The woman who carried me in her womb for 9 months only to left me for my whole life.

I never got the choice to know the real reasons why she took her own life.

So many thoughts were there:

Am I a bad child?

Am I not good enough for her

Am I the reason she killed herself?

No closure. No answers.

But then I realised that the choice wasn't even mine.

It was never supposed to be.

Yes, there will be regrets. So many of them but I have to respect the woman who birthed me.

One day I asked my dad, what happened?

He didn't give me a proper answer but told me stuff which may have changed my perspective.

He told me how she was depressed during their marriage.

How she was fighting with herself.

How my dad tried to give her the medication that she needed but the damn society questioned him.

He tried to give her the help that at that time no one actually considered it to be a solution.

I guess then my own resentment lessened. She didn't make that choice.

Her own demons did.

She needed help. But never got the chance.

But whatever happened it made me realise that sometimes people wanted to live but it became hard for them. They wanted one person to pull them back from that darkness.

My mother also wanted that.

And it wasn't her fault that the one person wasn't there to pull her back.

I forgave her.

Maybe the bitterness is there for the what-ifs but it lessened.

She will always be remembered and I will always adore her even if I don't know her.

Goodbye Ma, remember that my initial resentment was never towards you, it was just those unanswered questions you left behind.

I know that you loved me, even if you didn't get the chance to say it by yourself.

Love,

Mimi