Dear friend Mama and Baba

Dear Mama and Baba,

Over the past 18 years you have fed, clothed, spoiled, and neglected me all at once. You loved me as your daughter but never as a person with their own consciousness and sense of being. As a child I loved your presence, your minds, and your care. As I grew into my own person with a very different upbringing my path became much bigger than what you planned for me. Slowly you began to fear my growth believing that I was turning into something negative. The reason I’ve left you for the past 6 years mentally was not because of my lack of love and care for your emotions but ratherI knew that to follow in your pursuit was to become you. I’m a very different and beautiful person but I cannot live my life under guidelines I don’t believe in. If I did, which I tried to out of love to please you I would die inside and kill my own happiness. You never understood me and therefore could never raise me, with all that said I appreciate your efforts. The reason for my departure is to escape your captive love. For your rule in the house disallows my growth as a person. 

Baba you taught me anger and to disrespect Mama, you taught me to hide myself because I’m a female that I should only present myself in society if I was beautiful. I am beautiful and I don’t need people to see because they are blind like you became when I shaved my hair. As a kid I looked up to like God but you let me down, you told lies and I did the same, you screamed to be heard and I did the same, you valued my intelligence so I became smarter than everyone. But you also loved me and I still remember Saturday’s going to soog el ahad and you buying me cheese and spinach gozleme. And the bubblegum ice cream. I remember the simple bed time stories. Tooha the rabbit and many more parables that where passed down by your eb. But you never hugged me, you never kissed me, you made me think I was not worthy of your physical love. So I tried hard everyday to gain your love and respect slowly becoming someone I didn’t know or love. Everyday you remind of things that I should do but never how I felt. And still you live through me always. Every time you hit me or screamed at me I died because I tried so hard to be someone you loved that I neglected myself. Fear took over the love and respect my childhood self had for you, and you caused that every time you stayed quiet when I spoke about the beauty of the cosmos and the imagination i had (which is a lot for anyone) but your my eb. I heard your love when you screamed and so I aggregated you to receive more, you touched me only when you hit me so I screamed at you so you can hit me again. You gave me more money than I ever needed and I always asked for more even though I worked and provided myself with more money than any teenager wants. I learnt the art of purging, purging my money, my food, my personalities, and my efforts. The relief of wasting became my drug because I was in love with the high of reviving and consuming and building just to watch my towers of effort tumble, reminding me of that material waste and crushing me with each realisation. You taught me the beauty in animals, words, and nature. But you suppressed your desires that were only expressed through poetry. Make love to Mama they way you fantasise about her skin don’t fuck her she is more than a entrance. Love her the way you want to be loved. 

Mama you hugged me and kissed me and I pushed you away like Baba because that’s how I learned to love. You feared me because you knew before I did that I was not welcome to exist in our Mandean community. Your lessons burnt my liberties as a female, a figure destined to love in every way. I grew to treat you disrespectfully in fear of becoming the woman you are, you are a bird trapped with the key but unfamiliar with the mechanism of a lock. Inside you raised you’re eldest daughter to be a reflection of yourself, but you couldn’t tame my impulses because I was too big to fit in the steel box you made for me, declaring many times it’s for my own safety and very existence. Teaching me to be smaller more delicate more beautiful. But my gut bloated with every limit you set. Until I couldn’t stomach my own defiant behaviour. You taught me to shrink, to be less, to have less, you made me value physical over the mind, claiming it was impossible to talk to me because I saw a person when you saw an ugly figure and judged it. Through your judgement of others i reflected hate to myself and eventually you. You gave me my first art lesson, ‘use the red pencil and colour within the lines of a telephone’ you said. I’ve tried to colour within the lines drawn for me until I picked up a black marker and made my own lines. You bathed me, fed me, and clothed me, I learnt to do all those things by myself at too young of an age and in complete contrast to your methods because I grew to despise what you did for me to compensate simple acts of love and guidance. You loved me because I’m my Baba but I hated that you loved me, I wished you had never conjured such a monster. Mama learn to say no, grow into the powerful beauty you are, don’t be weak and don’t blame others they don’t matter. Be fierce and grab Baba my his throat and fuck him you are more than you think. 

I understand leaving home isn’t something your familiar with or agree to. But you must understand that it took a glimpse of death for me to understand that I already died and simply needed a easy way to escape physically. But my survival made me selfish making me want to live and be alive so unapologetically myself it scares even me. I’m sorry it’s not within your image. But that person died many times as I drained her down slowly in every slash of my wrists. She resides in the heart of the sea now and doesn’t live in any inch of me except my memory. 

Even though you tortured me and claimed it was love,I don’t want you to torment your minds and fool yourselves into believing it’s love for me. Don’t be selfish in being there for your two beautiful boys, they deserve the love you never gave me. As for me I will leave you and you will only exist in my memories. I’ve decided I’m worth more than your value me.

Take care of yourselves.