Chains
I remember those nights.
The chains never rattled. They were invisible. Wrapped tight around mummy's wrists, her ankles, her heart. She never tried to break free… No. She accepted them, like they were part of her flesh, like they were stitched into her skin.
"What is a woman?"
I used to wonder.
Is a woman a shadow, dragged by chains through the night, caught between the fists of a man she loves?
Is she meant to be quiet, her screams buried under the weight of his anger?
"Yes."
That’s what she told me with her eyes.
Her swollen, tearless eyes.
He’d hit her. Again. And again.
And she would stare at me with those hollow, dead eyes, whispering, “This is what love does.”
Is it?
Is love a shackle that binds one soul to another?
Is it supposed to be pain?
Is it supposed to break you?
Is it supposed to make you wish for nothingness?
I remember her, she would stand in the kitchen afterward, wiping blood from her lip.
I was so small, so weak.
But I could still see the chains pulling her down, crushing her. She would look at the sink as if drowning in it.
But her hands, they would just keep scrubbing…scrubbing…scrubbing away at the stains of the violence, the dirt of her own existence.
She’d say, “Tomorrow will be better, baby.”
And I’d lie in bed, shaking.
But tomorrow never came.
Only more chains.
"Why didn't you leave?"
I did ask her once.
She looked at me with sadness, but mostly with guilt, the kind of guilt that eats your soul alive.
She said, “I have nowhere else to go.”
And I realized, For her the doors are all locked.
Not the ones you see. Not the ones made of wood or iron.
No.
The doors to hope.
To self-worth.
To escape.
Every blow. Every bruise. It was like I could feel them too.
The crack of his fist against her jaw, the bruises spreading like ink on a page, they were chains tightening around us both.
Am I her?
Is this what awaits me?
Am I destined to live this life?
To wear the same chains she wore, like some wretched family heirloom passed down through generations of broken women?
"Love is not supposed to hurt."
But the walls, they laughed at me.
The floor laughed. The house laughed.
Because the truth is, in this house, love was pain.
It was all I knew.
How do you unlearn pain?
How do you unchain your heart when every link was forged in a furnace of screams and silence?
One night, I tried to dream.
I dreamed of freedom.
But what is freedom to someone who has never tasted it?
I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.
I saw my mother die long before her body gave up.
She died in that kitchen, washing dishes that would never be clean.
She died in that bedroom, staring at the ceiling, pretending she was somewhere else.
She died every time he touched her with rage instead of tenderness.
And I?
I was born into a cage.
No, I was born with chains wrapped around my wrists, my feet, my voice.
I was born a prisoner of his hatred, of her silence.
A prisoner of a life I never asked for.
"When will this end?"
I ask myself every night.
When will these chains snap?
When will I be free?
Or will I pass these chains to my own daughter one day, like a cursed bloodline that cannot be severed?
What is worse:
To suffer and survive,
Or to die quietly, like my mother?
No one will hear her story.
No one will know her pain.
She is just another woman who wore her chains too well, who taught me how to bend but never how to break free.
Life is a journey towards death.
But for some of us, death comes early.
For some of us, death is in every moment we breathe, every second we endure.
What is strength?
Is it surviving?
Or is it knowing when to let go, to escape, to leave behind the chains before they pull you under?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
Maybe one day, I will find out.
Maybe one day, I will find my voice.
But for now, I am her.
I am my mother's daughter.
And I wear her chains.
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