HEAR ME OUT HALEEMA AHMED, 17
W
e have all had those days. The days your self-confidence shatters once more. The days you embarrass yourself to astronomical levels. Yet, when these moments encapsulate your entire existence, problems larger than a bad hair day or poor math grade arise. Like most teenagers, I have had my fair share of these experiences, self-deprecating thoughts, and chronic stress. They have produced a conundrum of mental health crises in my brain with a label not always needed to identify its significance. I can feel it in my heart before I speak, think, or act. In these moments, schools recommend counsellors and therapists. Speak to absolute strangers? No, thank you. The obvious choice is to confide in someone you can trust. Someone who has known you for longer than you have known yourself. Speak to Throughout high school, I have my parents? Most definitely not. reached too many breaking points The immigrant story of trials and the frequency of these was only in a third-world country to venture exacerbated by the pandemic. Yet, over oceans for opportunity is not if you were to ask my parents how uncommon. The children bred from their daughter is doing, they would these travellers, say, “She is My peers may have fine! Getting like me, know what gratitude is, suppressed their struggles good grades, and yet, we also reading books, as I have but we will not know a different and watching pain. When your allow our children to do movies is all she parents’ adversity the same. does.” Without makes yours pale needing to in comparison, feelings of inadequacy step out of our homes, the children and isolation arise. How can I talk of immigrants live double lives to my parents about this when they suppressing our feelings and agitations have endured much worse? Do they to avoid angry and unproductive think I am just overreacting about confrontations with our parents. the “anxiety” I face? These questions For me, this stems beyond the remain unanswered. fact that my parents had arduous lives in India and worked from the ground up to provide for us. Disputes between relatives remain as gossip on
DO THEY
Understand ME?
the phone rather than materializing into progressive solutions for the sake of the family. The reasoning behind strict parenting was never discussed, just demanded. In this, parents lose the essence of what it means to care for a child. The trusting and confiding aspects. “Try reaching out to them and explaining how you feel” or other nonsensical solutions may be proposed. The only remedy is generational. My peers may have suppressed their struggles as I have but we will not allow our children to do the same. We must understand them even if we were never understood.
MY VOICE | ISSUE1VOL9 2021 | 9
