I have one parent. My mother. She loves me. I guess she is bound to do so because she gave birth to me and raised me. Unfortunately she doesn’t like me. I have one sibling. My elder brother. My mother and her beloved son share a bond which I don’t always understand. Even if he does the worst things possible, she will not utter a single word against him.

Even when we were kids, she favoured him more than me. But it was okay back then because my father showered me with tonnes of affection. Then I lost him and I started looking for love and appreciation from my mother and brother.

This is the first time I am expressing my feelings through my words. It still sounds like a stupid idea to me because actually I am embarrassed to see them treating me like this now. It is very natural for a mother and the first born child to share a close bond of love. Yes, he is her first child and a son (a mumma’s boy) and they have been staying under the same roof for so long unlike me.

I came home from my boarding school only during the vacations. Then I lived in a hostel when I started going to college. The course was rigorous and I didn’t get too many holidays. Initially I used to go home even if we had only a day’s gap between classes. I don’t know why I stopped doing that. I guess it was mainly because I missed my father and the happy days that I spent with him.

I love my mother too. I respect her or at least I did respect her until recently. She has done many things for us. She has endured a lot to raise her kids and she did all of this despite facing hardships. When she took charge of the financial matters, I beamed with immense pride.

But I guess she failed to see that. Even my brother refused to acknowledge my feelings. At times I was ignorant to the fact that I was not really liked by my family. Almighty has a funny way of revealing the truth to us when we least expect it.

A couple of months back my mother’s health deteriorated drastically. I sensed the bitterness that they had for me at this time. I always knew that my opinions and likes were not accepted completely by my mother. But I always thought this was because I was a rebel and assumed such things were normal between a mother and a daughter. But I was wrong at so many levels.

When she fell sick, my brother lost his cool completely. He was obsessed about the nature of her disease and I don’t blame him for it. After all, she is all that we have in this world.  But somehow he forgot that she was my mother too and that I too loved her deeply. He did not realize that I prayed for her every single second of the day. He forgot that I was so much younger than him. He forgot that I too was trying hard to hold myself together.

I too was very anxious about my mother’s health. But he made me suffer so much more with his mean words. Every day, without fail, he gave me a dose of hurtful words. He strongly believes that his mother (who happens to be my mother as well) has no importance in my eyes. I don’t know what I did to give him that kind of an impression. My mother and my brother failed to see past their own assumptions. I wasn’t prepared for such things and did not know what to do.

My mother was taking high doses of steroids. I knew they played havoc with my mother’s emotions. Sometimes, I can forgive my mother when I take this into consideration. But it is so hard to do the same thing with my sibling.

He was suffering and he ensured that I suffered too. Initially his behaviour roused my anger but it later turned into denial. I had never expected this from him. But now the storms have calmed and all I feel is a cold void in my heart.

I don’t really nurture hatred for him. Actually his words have hurt me so deeply that they are engraved in my heart and mind. I feel ashamed to even put down my emotions in words. But I could not take it anymore.

He humiliated me in front of our relatives and  the domestic help. I was very angry with him at first. But now I just don’t feel anything anymore except the grave blow to my inner self. At one point, in a fit of uncontrollable anger, he almost hit me with his cell phone. He stopped when it was only a few centimetres away from my face. That scared me.

I knew my father for 11 years and he had never raised his hand on me. I was not the kind of student who got scolded in school. And when he did that, it scared me. He said, “He never knew my true colours!” (Yes, sadly, those were his exact words). He then went on to say that had he known I was this kind of a person, he would never have taken me with him on all those long trips.

And then to my utter horror, he told me that the money I had been using till now was not mine. He said that if he hadn’t provided for me, I would have been penniless. And then he went on to say that Lord forbid, if anything unthinkable happens to our mother, I would have to start begging to earn a living.

I am a very proud girl. I always have been. When he said such things, I thought he had become completely insane. But what hurt me the most was that he said all these things in front of my mother and she did not stop him. Not even for a second.

And today, months after all this happened, when I bring up this subject with her, she accuses me of having a malicious heart. She tells me that I am the bad guy and her son has a soft heart. My friends and the people who know me tell me that they like my heart the most. But my own mother can’t see this. Or maybe she is so blinded by her love for my sibling that she does not want to see it.

I know I am not a saint. I have a bad temper too. But I have always loved them. Whenever I had any conversation with my friends or the Lord above, they were a part of it. I knew that wars between brothers and sisters had happened earlier too in our blood line. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I too would end up on the same platform with my brother. There was a time when I thought that my brother adored me.

I could never have survived those two horrid months of my life without the support of my aunt, my younger cousin and my friend who worked in the same city. These people offered rock solid support during the most difficult time of my life. My brother should have done this to me but he chose to do otherwise and my mother somehow saw only the pain of her son.

They could not tolerate the fact that I too was supposed to be a part of their family. My sibling visited me yesterday. But I didn’t feel any love for him. Did I mention that he yelled at me over the phone just a week back? He blamed me and said that I don’t care about what happens at home and to my mother. She was suffering from allergic conjunctivitis and apparently I was responsible for her slow recovery.

He refuses to see the reason. He treats me in the worst possible manner whenever he loses his cool, which is a frequent occurrence. He has pushed my self-esteem to the lowest possible point.

Even my tears have no respect for me. They just start flowing down my face and seem to have a will of their own. Yesterday evening I was with my female cousin at a café. I visited this place quite frequently earlier. She happens to be my sister cum friend cum valuable advisor.

I was laughing with her and suddenly the next minute I started crying. I was embarrassed because this happened in front of the staff and the other people who were at the café at that time. That is what made me write this today.

I had to get this out of my system. I wanted to air my emotions by breathing life into them through these words. I didn’t write this for sympathy. Perhaps some or most of you out there will think I am a weirdo who just went ahead and bared things openly.

The café was bursting with people. What happened there yesterday evening was the worst thing that has happened to me so far. I always believed that I had a lot of pride. But it got shattered yesterday. Completely.

My cousin advised me to hit the delete button. But I couldn’t do it because I wanted to tell my side of the story to my sibling and mother. I know that they won’t care about it or understand the reason behind it. There are certain times at night when their words come to haunt me and rob me off my slumber. So I guess I wrote it to free myself; so that I could finally move on.

I really wonder one thing. If a mother does not like her own kid, who else will?

Perhaps I am doomed to lead a life in which I will be craving for affection, love and appreciation without ever getting it.

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