Good Morning. Goodbye

On the better days, I dream of being a little girl again; my six-year-old body slightly shivering with the cold breeze of Amman’s summer nights. I’d be half-asleep but pretending to be fully unconscious. My father—my ultimate hero back then—would pick me up and carry me down to our basement-like apartment to put me in bed. I always loved it when he did this.

But today isn’t a good day. I woke up in the time I’d designated for myself, finding out I’d been crying in my sleep again. My jaw muscles felt too tense, and my teeth were again so intent on torturing me that I could not gulp down the cup of water without letting a small cry escape my lips. Years of biting down on my teeth all night have rendered them a boneyard, and I can hardly eat or drink anything anymore without having a sharp, neurotic throb of pain travel through my jaw and up my face. I looked at the digital clock in the kitchen: it shone 2:43 am back at me.

It started when I was a teenager; my father started getting sharp-edged, while my mother got softer in time. He was always looking for something to be angry about, she was beginning to cry more often. And almost simultaneously the teeth-grinding started when I was deep asleep. He’d come into my room at exactly 4 o’clock every morning—awakened by my unearthly-loud sound of teeth-grinding—and he’d give me a shake. Sometimes he was gentle and would offer me some water and painkillers. Sometimes he’d just slap me out of nowhere, and I’d awake with a dull aching of the heart. On those days, I reckoned he’d be already struggling to sleep, and I’d just become another struggle he had to get past.

In 2012, seven years ago, the long-awaited dream of my parents came true, and it was finally possible for us to migrate to the United States. Being Arab during that time—and sadly even now—meant that you had to look for any and every chance you get to leave your home country. Life quality was significantly dropping, and my dad could hardly afford to keep us in school.

As a teenager, I thought that migrating to The Promised Land meant turning the arbitrary switch that would automatically make me happier, make my parents softer with each other, make us richer. I thought everything was going to be okay. I was little aware of the fact that wherever you go, you take yourself with you. And changing landscape with no change of perspective was pretty much useless.

This always left me with a big room for ruminating over the what-ifs. What if we stayed there? What if we never left? What if we lived in California instead of Florida? And the questions persist, especially when presented to me while in bed trying to get my eyelids to close.

Those what-ifs are revisiting again as I approach my desk to grab the letter I wrote to my mom, just to reread it one last time. I directed the letter to mom, and mom only, because I loved her with every fiber of my being. She was my confidant, my only true friend in this country. She loved me and my brother with unsurpassed compassion. She sacrificed her youth, her peace of mind, her physical and mental health just so she could make up for the emotional safety that the other parent could not offer. Every time she set a plate of food in front of me, feelings of overwhelming gratitude showered me, and I feel like I will never be able to pay her back half of what she’s been through to keep us sane and intact.

Every good deed I have done, every small accomplishment I have made, I owe to her and her alone. And she was always applauding me from backstage, while my father stepped in and relished in the applause from everywhere. He actively tried to seek it whenever possible, to make sure everyone knew how great of a father he is.

My online therapist told me those feelings sometimes stemmed from deeper compassion than love; I saw how much she was abused and used by my father, how often her goodness was taken for granted, even somehow turned into misconduct and disrespect in his twisted lies. All of this generated compassion towards my mom, plus the fact that we are going through a harsh experience together, making us yet closer to each other.

Up until this moment, I told myself that once I got the chance, I will do it and I won’t look back; I got the job at the coffee shop. I wrestled with my dad to convince him I needed a gap year after high school. I saved up every last penny, cut most ties with the people I used to call friends, searched for the most suitable town, found a suitable AirBnB, and told Mohannad that I loved him when he came last Christmas from university.

I asked if he missed home, and he told me he no longer referred to it as ‘home’. He told me that the entire world was the home of the Believer, and that as long as he was doing well by himself and obeying his God’s commands, he no longer cared where he lived, as long as he lived in peace.

I felt that his words were a secret sign; one that told me that I can make a move before I lost what was left of my sanity in this household. But staring back at my graduation photo with my mom, I still looked upon the only reason I could still remain. I was so afraid that this would crush her, break her apart, and make her life alongside my father yet more intolerable. Her hijabi, angelic face stared back at me, wringing remorse out of me.

But this past year, my mental health, my patience, and loyalty have been tested like no other. The insults, the big demands, the high hopes he had of me were beginning to use real, visible damage. The immense pressure he always put me under had no user manual to guide me through his well-worn wishes and dreams of me becoming ‘a good daughter’. It was always too complicated. I always had to do too much, and still didn’t get the love and recognition I’d so longed for since I was a child. At the same time, I saw friends and classmates failing courses, doing drugs and alcohol, and still relentlessly gaining their parents’ unconditional love and support.

Those facts put together taught me that the problem wasn’t in me. Connecting those dots—along with how much fear and anger he showed every time my brother or I actively demanded love and attention as kids—told me that it was his deficiency, not mine.

It’s 3 o’clock in the morning now. In an hour or so, mom and dad will be waking up to pray Al-Fajr. Dad will shuffle slowly to knock on my door and wake me up with his groaning, loud voice. He’d then go to the bathroom to take a piss and smoke a cigarette while mom slowly makes her way from under the covers. He will put out his cigarette, make his wudu’, and come back again to knock on my door. He will open the door to see if I was up or not.

He won’t find me. He won’t see my floral bed covers intertwined with my plump hips. He won’t see my beloved graduation photo propped up on my nightstand, alongside my glasses and my reusable water cup. He will find a well-made bed instead, the letter I wrote to mom, and a note beside it that said, “Good morning. Goodbye.”