Log # 70

For the last couple days I have weird unsettling feelings and dreams. I don’t know what it is and why but my peace and calm is so much more disturbed than ever. Praying and hoping all the time that Allah creates ease for me and my family and for once, we can live peacefully and happy. For the last three decades, my five family members (my father, mother, sister, brother, and me) have not seen what a peaceful life looks like. As far as I can remember in my early childhood life, I also recall various different kinds of traumas and no one to help. Apparently my father’s family is a well tied together family and looks out for each other. But I can only wonder and ask, where was this looking out and support when we needed it? No where is what I can tell you with certainty. To this date, there is no one to support and call spade for a spade. So much for a well tied together joint family. Much hypocrisy!

None of my paternal family members stood up to tell my father that you have daughters, do you know how much the decision of this divorce will impact them? No one told him, you have an unborn child on the way, how will this kid be raised? Once you separate, it will not only impact your children but you as well. How will you live when you are old and retired? At the time, the intoxication at the time of ‘we kicked her (my mom) out’ was really high. It was some sort of a win for them. My father listens to his family a lot and relies on them for most of his decisions, if not all. Why did no one stepped in to sort out the situation? Many of them over a course of years have been telling me we didn’t do anything, we had no involvement. It is incorrect and a lie and if not, why didn’t you do anything for us including for your own brother/son/nephew/cousin (my father).

My father was the one who was carrying the expenses of our entire household. This includes his own two children, his mom, his brother and his brother’s entire family. He took care of all the utility bills, groceries, any and all maintenance of the house, any new renovation that was needed in the house. My father was the only one who took care of all of it and went so far in making all these folks happy at the expense of his own kids and eventually himself. The world does not reward you for what you do for them. They only think they are entitled to it. It only enrages me and hurts me that everyone knew this but no one stepped in ever because it served them well. For three decades that had been ongoing, three decades. The same time it took for all these people who had been taking advantage of him to build their lives while running him dry. He retired with nothing left for him. This is not just a financial perspective but also in life. The way the five of us had been cut through again and again by the same exact people has now left me speechless. How could you?

They tell him to be dependent on his brother’s wife for food and other day to day stuff, as if this is okay to do so. Just because it works for them, it is convenient for them. Like it was in case of my late dadi (grand ma). Have they ever even recognized the shame and embarrassment that he must be going through each day? The way that woman has treated my dadi during her last days and I bear witness to it, Wallah I fear she must be treating my father the same way too. Like an inconvenience. Like a burden. He was the man who took for granted his life, his children’s life and his wife at the time to provide for this woman. To ensure her children were always provided for. Us and them were always the same for my dad but never vice versa for my uncle. He ensured this woman was always given everything. This vile woman, the wife of my father’s brother.

I have hated joint family structure and I always will with a passion. If it was not for this poisonous family structure, things could have been so much more different today. Every single day that I spend here, is spent thinking of ways of what do I do to have enough to get my family settled somehow. Every single day I think of it and go through the pain of uncertainty. I only wish at this point in my life to live some years in complete peace, happiness and contentment under a roof that is for the five of us only. Will that ever happen? I don’t know. I pray on it and really hope Allah will create a way for us. Ameen.