The Home Where I Never Belonged

Is Home Really the Place You Truly Belong?

I live in my own world away from the crowd. I love to go out just for a while to meet new people. I sat down sometimes in the cage of my own silence, wondering whether the outside world is worth fighting for. 

Eventually, my main job back then was to tell Alexa, “Play Miley Cyrus.” 

“Play Demi Lovato” 

“Play Adele”

As I hum to the tunes of “I know you are wrong for me…," “I can’t love you in the dark…," and "Baby, when you look up at the sky, we'll see shooting stars just passing by…”

My children, aka my pets, walk near my legs, sometimes passing in between them as I place one step after another, leaving our footprint on the newly swept white tiles. The Sundays are a bit different with an extra load and a lot of cleaning. I took out all books from the shelves and started wiping them one by one. The life is extra generous and extra good, with chicken for two meals and eggs in the morning. The blue and black bruises are just another unknown hit at some unknown places. This time it is my chin with prominent blue and black marks refusing to hide behind the concealer. Yesterday, at the party, people asked me, "What are these marks all about?”

“It’s just an accident."

“No, it isn't; I beat her up," added my mother with a smile on her face. Her eyes were shining with the yellow light overhead. 

My eyes slightly lowered as I look at my shoes, and my cheeks shaking from within, probably turning red. My mother confesses once again, “I beat her up yesterday with a STEEL ROD.”

I lowered my gaze in deep shame, waiting to cover myself with a blanket over my head. I hear the people around us say, “Please control your anger; it’s not right to beat your daughter. She is an adult now."

With a deep sigh, probably from me or the people around me, they left. They are right, but the end of the conversation is the laughter stinging me from within like a burning fire scalding my skin. I have nothing to say, except to be quiet once again and move to the nearby coffee counter for a hot mug. I will go home, remove my makeup, and clean up my children’s mess without getting a moment of rest, probably with the jewelry on. 

This is how a voice turns silent with repeated blows one by one as I look into the sparkling eyes of my children. Their wagging tails and their barks like an elephant trumpet, announcing my arrival like a queen to my neighbours. 

The queen who is studying instead of partying and meeting new people like my long-lost friends. I don’t need a new boyfriend like others, nor do I need sex. I want only to be my own self, an unapologetic one. Not the one subdued and head kept down over and over again. 

I work, study, play with dogs, and remove ticks from their bodies. I remove the spider-shaped red ticks and grey ticks with small jelly-like dots struck deeply into their skin. My fingers were black like soot, and my nails filled with blood stains from pressing the ticks in between my nails. I type once again in search of new words, and I meet with a loss that I can’t describe in words. I miss my home, even though I can hear the quiet walls where my screams from lashing of the belt were the only ones that echoed, gradually quieting into the deep abyss as I cry myself to sleep the very next moment. My pets were sleeping next to me with their snores that echoed in my bedroom in the darkness of the night, refusing to leave my side. 

Once I leave all the walls, I move ahead. I meet new people; the outside world is far better than the ones inside my home. I walk down a new path, stumble across new people, and see new things, just like a plot in the new English series, which is probably more interesting in real life. 

People are easier to deal with; once you have your own blood waiting to tear you apart, a sudden rise in heartbeat, the onlooking judgement from people, and curious gaze fall in one place. That too, without much care in this world. You speak more for your satisfaction. Perhaps this is what happens when iron pieces rub against each other and become sharp, making you lose your childlike innocence. The money is a constant source of concern, and the walls of office replace the ones at home with people looking up at you with twinkling eyes and a smile, saying, "RESPECT." 

In the end, I didn’t choose me because I wanted to; I chose me because I had to. All those ways of escaping myself through people, places, animals, and things failed. Gradually, I become a caterpillar waiting to be a butterfly. I broke free, and I broke every bit of me I never knew existed in the first place. If I exist, it’s because of me. What I am and what I will be is up to me. No one deserves a sanctuary on my space anymore.