Writers Jam

It's a time-tested story that has been passed in the culture. The girl that gets married young. She is so naive, and trusting, and wileless, that she's tossed to the rough and uncharted seas that is the world beyond her home. She's humiliated over and over and yet she's not shrewd enough to see it coming. She is taken as a joke, a child.

Somehow this is still a cycle that no one escapes. Every woman I know has been downplayed for good in her own home. Every action of hers giving the world to her children, leaving no vocabulary for herself. Every facet of her own personal world quietly simmering away, with a lid on it for good measure. It must be stifling, this inner world of hers, with no space to stoke her own spirits. How can a mother ever not be warm when her heart burns even with no oxygen in this world to call her own?

But there's always that one neighbour, that one colleague, that one aunt, that one older woman who knows. She's been there. She's done that before. She's also had that one older lady look out for her. And she's willing to embody her own teacher for this one girl. Not to save her, but to teach her that she can save herself, for starters.

There are small defiances, of course, small cracks through which the pressure fizzles out. Taking the bus to nowhere on weekends and learning silly dances with her kids. All under wraps though. Small talents never exposed, for what could bring more burning shame than a woman's desire to be seen?

This will never save her fully, but it will keep her boiling underneath. She will still flounder with her daughter in tow. She'll take one look at her daughter, gasping to take a breath in a world that constricts her chest to keep her in line. That's when she'll save herself, flowing and spilling on her way.

Lava pouring out, unbound resentment and decisions rising to engulf an igneous heart. Her world exploding into a supernova, rapidly expanding and heating up. She's not going to let another woman teach her daughter that her fire can be kindled silently in corners, unseen. Her children deserve the world, and if they happen to inherit one that burns with passion, scorching away the scars of stagnation, then so be it.