I’m Tired

• Diaries
• Essay
• Non-Fiction
• Novel
• Short story
• Autobiographies

								
I’m Tired
 I always held the stance that one should never have role models. I firmly believe that if you aspire to be like one specific person, and glorify them to an extreme, they will inevitably disappoint you. However, it seems there is only one exception for me, my mother.
My mother was everything that imbued beauty. Her hair was a particular shade of brown that flirted with red. Her eyes caramelized in the sun, and her skin glittered and glistened, as if she was celestial. My admiration and astonishment of her perplexed me. I didn't know it was possible to glorify someone as much as I did her, yet I found myself doing just that each day. I'd watch her meticulously apply her lipstick, just below her cupid's bow, and just above her natural lip line. She pulled her hair back, leaving just a few strands in the front of her face, to frame it. She had a booming social presence. She was everything I wanted to be: charming, funny, witty, but buried deep below her exuberance and buoyancy, she was human too. And you could see it in her tired eyes, in her gray strands of hair that she always dyed, and in the way her forehead wrinkled indicating she had been in distress for a long time.
As a child I found it hard to empathize with her, because I put her on a pedestal all my life. She was something beyond human to me, some angelic being, so I found it difficult to
understand she would have the same pathetic feelings, as I did. However, I remember vividly the first time I saw her complexities. It was a weekday night, and my mother routinely put me to
            
  bed, far too late for a child at that age. I was extremely clingy, and I couldn’t be left alone. I needed her to sleep beside me because I felt her absence just as profoundly as I felt her presence. So she'd sleep next to me every night, leaving my father in a cold and empty bed. I'd often insist on hearing a story before sleeping, and my mother reluctantly agreed, sometimes. But she didn’t like the formalities of a regular fairytale or fable, in fact her favorite stories were sarcastic and contemptuous. She'd tell me stories like, “Once upon a time, there was a king and a queen. Both of them died. The end.” Then she would complete this story with erupting laughter, and although I couldn’t see her face in the dark, I always imagined a very devious and malicious smirk on her face. If she wasn’t taunting me with disheartening stories, she'd ask me to recite verses of the Quran as beautifully as I could, ask me to improve her English, or run her fingers through my hair gently, until I drifted to sleep. But on this particular night, there was something different about her. She wasn’t as enthusiastic to speak with me, nothing I said was funny to her, and she laid just a few inches further than usual. I asked her what was wrong, she said nothing. I asked her why she didn’t tell me a story, she said nothing. I asked and asked, until I yelled, “WHY AREN'T YOU HAPPY!!???” I propped myself up on my elbows to see the silhouette of her face. “I'm TIRED!!” She exclaimed in a dissatisfied and angry tone. My window was open, and the moonlight softly beamed onto her face, just enough for me to see her glistening, wet eyes, reflecting the light. She was crying. My entire life, I was told crying was a sign of weakness. The irony of the strongest woman I knew, doing something as weak as crying, baffled me. I layed back down, further this time, and buried my hands in my face. I shut my eyes and contemplated what I just witnessed. That woman wasn’t Ammi, the Urdu word for mother. Ammi was always on queue, never missed a beat, and endlessly generous. Her battery never drained, and she never had a moment of selfishness. But in that instance, she was Nishat, an immigrant woman who
               
 worked against her will to pay the bills in a country she didn’t even fluently speak the language of. She came home and cared for her five children, cooked, cleaned, and still had just enough energy to tell me stories and make me laugh harder than anyone. Yet still, she received no recognition. No one thanked her, no one told her how appreciated and hard working she was. She was more than just MY mother, she was also my fathers wife, my grandmother's daughter, her bosses employee, and somehow, still herself. So yes, she was tired. Vehemently, immensely, inequitably tired. I replayed that scene in my head, her eyes in the moonlight. I examined the image closely and saw the humanity in her pupils. I empathized with her, and saw the hurt and rawness of her emotion, and all at once, a guilt fell from the top of my mind, to the pit of my stomach. I shivered from the coldness of her world. I turned over, inched closer, and wrapped my arm around her stiff body.
It would have been a year later when I truly understood the significance of that night. At the time, I was ignorant to the fact that my mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and she
had been battling her mortality, as well as raising a seven year old child. I layed back down on the same bed, just without her this time. I felt her absence profoundly, because now, her presents only existed in the past. She was now beyond a locked door, I may never find the key to. And the only pieces of her I could cling on to now, were the memories in my head. Each time I forgot one, a piece of my most valued treasure chipped away. I thought of that night, and remembered her sorrowful expression. I learned from her what patience and perseverance truly is. She showed me how to care, even when it's not returned. And most importantly, she showed me what it means to love, endlessly, even when you're tired. A warm feeling arose in my chest, the empty space next to me began to feel full. I turned over, inched closer to where she would've been, and wrapped my arm around her memory.
              
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