Last night I told my mother, "I wish I was dead."

Hola mis amores;

Hope each of you is doing well! Looks like Fridays are becoming post days :D I'm not going to promise that I'll put something out every Friday because I procrastinate a lot and who knows what might happen in the very next minute?

I'm pretty active on Tumblr and I like how creators put out excerpts from books. To me these excerpts feel like the reader is annotating a book and passing it on to me and I think that's lovely. It's really beautiful to read a book that someone passes on to you and come across those words and lines that made them lose their sanity for a moment. I recently took to highlighting lines that I like in books; I was a bit vary about this at start because I want the pleasure of re-reading a book and mulling it over from a different perspective each time. I started this out with classics and those books make me want to bawl my eyes out. (HINT: a book review on one of the classics I read might come out soon ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

I rambled and went way off topic but in this post I want to talk about a piece of writing I came across. I'll post the writing below and put you through the agony of what I went through ;)

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Last night, I told my mother "I wish I was dead" in a fit of rage and winter clouded her eyes. But it wasn't white and it wasn't quiet, it resembled something like helplessness and rage. She was in pain and I knew I hurt her. I wanted to say something, anything, but how do you withdraw a declaration of war? How do you stop the bombs that already destroyed homelands? In that moment I remembered how she always told me that when she was a kid, she was too afraid to sleep with the lights on. Not because she was afraid of monsters, but because she feared her grandmother would die. Because when you're a kid, not seeing it means it doesn't exist anymore. I saw the winter in her eyes again and I knew I had switched off the light, she wasn't angry, she was afraid.

And I also remembered how she always told me I'd always be 3 years old for her, always a child, and for the first time, I heard in the voice of a three year old "I wish I was dead". My heart broke. And I wanted to hug her and hold her, tell her I was sorry, that I didn't mean it. Before I could move a hand, she left the room. The entire evening, I saw myself as she saw me, a 3 year old child. I saw the child hurt herself and cry herself to sleep every week, fight her friends with her tiny hands and two ponytails, I saw her depression and her anxiety, I saw her yell "I wish I was dead" and I knew. I knew. I wanted to shout through the walls, yell and cry and tell my mother that now I KNEW, but I didn't. I wept and wept until I heard a quiet knock and a soft familiar voice whispered, "Dinner is ready."

- Ritika Jyala, excerpt from The world is a sphere of ice and our hands are made of fire.

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I stumbled upon this yesterday as I was scrolling through Instagram. I normally stop to read any post that has words. Initially I thought this was something light-hearted but little did I know that it would be completely opposite!

This excerpt broke me. There's no milder way of putting it. Some writers write so well that you need to stop and gather your breath before you proceed to read. Just after reading the second line I had to suck in a deep breath.

I've read many excerpts and books and at this point, I'm almost desensitized to the painful scenes and tears don't spring to my eyes anymore. This one made me want to hug my mother and apologize for all the angry words I've thrown at her.

We never think of our parents as kids. They're this all- knowing figures with lots of wisdom and experience on their hands. We never think that "hey maybe they went through this too." That thought in itself makes me want to console them. The uncertainty of life, them feeling lost just as we feel today is something that makes me feel melancholy for them. The thought that they played a parental role for their younger siblings when their parents passed away makes me want to mourn their childhood. I'm not defending their actions or the hurt they might've caused you; but it does put certain things into perspective when we realize that they might've gone through it too.

My mother always tells me that however much I grow older I'd still be a kid to her. I used to laugh it off before but now I'm not sure if that's how I want my parents to perceive me. I don't want them to see me broken and feel helpless for a child. There's something about seeing children hurt. They are just so pure and innocent; ready to be molded to fit into this world. No one likes to see a child cry and them not knowing why. You look at them and the first thing you think is how small they are. Their heart is even smaller. To imagine the pain as we adults carry into their tiny hearts is just soul shattering.

When the writer talks about how she saw herself as a three year old toddler throughout the evening, the picture she paints is forlorn. Put yourself in the perspective of a child who cries themselves to sleep every night. There's a weird overwhelming weight over my heart that threatens to crush it. I'm not even a mother and I can't imagine the immense amount of pain a parent would feel when they see their child struggling, whatever age they might be; for parents they're immortalized at a certain age. The pain we go through seems so humongous when we inflict it upon a child.

You rarely see a child sad. Even if they are, it's something trivial. Their emotions are much more clear and amplified than we allow ourselves to feel. The pain of being broken and watching someone else struggle through their suicidal thoughts is a pain I wouldn't wish upon any of my enemies.

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Whew! That was very tough for me to write. I ran out of words and couldn't help but imagine a toddler who might be depressed.

This is the link to the original post:

last night I told my mother I wish I was dead

Make sure you check out her profiles; @ritikajyala on Tumblr, Instagram and Twitter!

I'd really love to know your thoughts on this excerpt and whatever I shared too! You could comment down below or text me on Instagram or Tumblr too!

Until next time!

~moonrelation