Author's Note : My Mom read the diary entry below—up until the page break provided.

I Am Nothing

All day long I have been trying to write something, scrounging for prompts online and whatnot. Unfortunately, a fact I have just unearthed about myself is that I only write really good stuff in moments of extreme emotional upheaval. It's like a word vomit, which just happens to be grammatically correct in the most part.

So here us why I am emotionally stressed : My Mom. Those two words are a blessing as well as a curse, a problem as well as a solution, an angel as well as a demon.

Well, I had better start at the beginning. Today, my aunt was supposed to have her gall bladder removed. It was a minor operation that was to take place in the morning, and then she would be allowed to go home after an overnight observation thingy. As a result, I was alone in our house with her two daughters.

My Mom comes home at seven in the evening and I serve her dinner in bed like I do every day. After washing her hands in the plate itself—again an everyday ritual—she tells me she is going to sleep, drinks from the bottle of water I bring her, and proceeds to do just that. Before lying down, she tells me that when I feed my cousins—both of whom are old enough to feed themselves—I am to give the older one egg curry and the younger one something else (an Indian dish) in addition to what was cooked for dinner. I muttered a 'yes' and left the room.

Two years later, my Dad comes home from the Hospital, and its dinner-time. Absent-minded as I am, I forget the egg curry and the other thing. When I hand everyone their dinner in the bedroom (that is where the air conditioner is, so everyone just stays there while the slave of the house toils away), Mom asks me whether or not I have given the stuff.

I make the biggest mistake of my life—I lie. "I have just popped both the things in the microwave," I reply.

She looks at me with eyes that would make Lord Voldemort run for the hills. Screaming. "I will check."

As she starts to get off the bed, I spout off the truth. And you know what my Mom does? She barges through the bedroom doorway, so that both of us are in the living room, and closes the door behind her.

The she proceeds to beat me to a pulp.

Both the kids are just a door away, so I try not to make a sound—maybe, just maybe, they didn't realize Mom's intention by the way she crowded me out of the room. But it is hard not to make a sound, especially when she slams my head in the wall, because it fucking hurts. And there is no need to be discreet—Mom's screeches are enough to wake the dead.

-I-AM-NOTHING-

She shrieks about lying—how she abhors it, how she hates liars, and how I shouldn't have lied to her.

She is wrong. If I had gotten away with the lie, I would have escaped the clobbering.

Then it is over. I huddle be the wall, trying to blend into it—Maybe she'll forget to hit me if I stay like that. My glasses are on the floor beside me. The slaps and punches to my face have probably turned my face tomato red. My eyes have started watering—particularly my left eye, as Mom is right-handed. The area under my left eye is burning. My entire right cheek is tingling. So is my scalp, as Mom dragged my hair to position my face for the next blow.

She's at the stove right now, reheating the goddamned 'stuff'. Mom loves to rant and curse after a good beating—you all want me dead, one of these days I will kill myself, why don't you go drown in a well, you useless bitch? That kind of rant. I keep telling myself Mom loves me. Over and over and over again, like a chant. On the good days, I believe myself. Mostly, I think : Yeah, right. Heavy on the sarcasm.

You know how this incredibly awesome scenario becomes the best night of my life? My cousin steps in the kitchen.

I straighten up, trying to look as if I have just been scolded and not clobbered. It is a tough act, considering my face is red. But I somehow manage to pull it off. Maybe. She still sends me a pitying look. It is worse than Mom's head-banging.

You know something else? After I finish up my dinner whilst trying to drink in my tears, I come out into the infamous living room to write this. I am only half-way through it, when suddenly Mom comes barging through the door again and asks me if I am trying to revolt by showing some attitude. In case you are sane and don't understand Psycho Talk, she thinks sitting out here in forty-eight degrees Celsius instead of the air-conditioned bedroom is a show of spirit.

Then she notices the notebook I am scribbling in. I try to explain its my personal diary, that I am purging, that she is breaking a non-written rule about not reading someone else's diary.

If you think she listens, you are off your rocker.

So there she sits, reading glasses perched on her nose, circling words like 'slave' and 'fucking hurts' in my diary.

I sit there, tears of frustration pooling in my eyes at my impotence. I cannot do anything.

Then she 'talks' to me. She tells me how I am not the slave of the house. She is. How she toils day and night to put food in my belly and good education in my worthless little head. How I live like a queen, with a pigsty for a room. So, the room is mine, I have to care for it and keep it spic and span. I am her kid, but she does to keep food in my belly is her charity for me? Warped concept, if you ask me. You created me, woman. I didn't ask for a good education or food. You wanted me to be an engineer, not me. You want me to be your little robot, not me.

Then Mom tells me I am completely worthless. I make faces when I am told to get anything in the middle of dinner (a blatant lie and both of us know it). I am a burden on her. In the amount she spends over my education, she could buy a thousand sarees. In the amount of time she spends toiling at work, she could sit at home and watch TV. If I hadn't existed in her world, things would have been a lot easier.

Actually, if I had any gumption, I wouldn't exist in her world—or anyone else's for that matter—by morning.

Don't worry. As I said before in another fic, I am a gutless, spineless little coward.

Anyways, that ends my tale of humiliation.

I am twenty years old, and my aunt's kids know I am tuned up regularly.