fessing up.

i don't want to become my mother, a fearsome, broken vessel with only the shards of regret held together by anger and resentment to build her frame.

she wanted to be an artist.

to run away and become the person she always wanted to be.

but she was denied these things.

for so long, her entire being was crafted for her, forged in tradition by her parents' hands.

she went on to finally - so she thought - find escape.

but the world she came to was just as cruel and withholding as the one she left.

she had to trade her passion in for pragmatism.

raise her girls to succeed in the lives she knew and feared they would grow to hate as much as she did hers.

pass on the legacies of duty and practicality.

train them to be as realistic and prepared as she was forced to become.

but she failed.

underneath all those talks of what was right and real and attainable were whispers of an unforgotten, unforgettably passionate and angry past.

we heard the whispers.

soaked them up like sponges, more than we could ever do with the shrill call of reality.

we became passionate, too.

angry with the system that broke our mother and took her in.

i want to be an artist.

i want to say the things my mother never got to paint.

i want to prove to her and to all the nay sayers that the most real and most practical thing we can do is to have passion and to act on it.

to be the selves we were always meant to be.

to outweigh the anger with happiness and love and sincerity.

to stop breaking ourselves and to create and commit to the selves that hide, secretly, underneath all of the fear and doubt.

i don't want to be my mother as she is.

i want to be me and provide some ounce of comfort to the woman with night terrors.

i want to turn her nightmares into dreams and dreams into reality.

i want to give that secret self of hers a sense of solace.

and a voice.