HEAR ME OUT

HALEEMA AHMED, 17

Throughout high school, I have reached too many breaking points and the frequency of these was only exacerbated by the pandemic. Yet, if you were to ask my parents how their daughter is doing, they would say, “She is My peers may have fine! Getting suppressed their struggles good grades, as I have but we will not allow our children to do reading books, and watching movies is all she the same. does.” Without needing to step out of our homes, the children of immigrants live double lives suppressing our feelings and agitations to avoid angry and unproductive confrontations with our parents. For me, this stems beyond the 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

We 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. DO THEY DO THEY Like most teenagers, I have had my fair share of these experiences, self-deprecating thoughts, and chronic stress. They have produced Understand Understand 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, ME? ME? 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 the phone rather than materializing my parents? Most definitely not. into progressive solutions for the sake

The immigrant story of trials of the family. The reasoning behind in a third-world country to venture strict parenting was never discussed, over oceans for opportunity is not just demanded. In this, parents uncommon. The children bred from lose the essence of what it means to these travellers, care for a child. The trusting and like me, know confiding aspects. what gratitude is, “Try reaching out to them and yet, we also and explaining how you feel” or know a different other nonsensical solutions may pain. When your be proposed. The only remedy is parents’ adversity generational. My peers may have makes yours pale suppressed their struggles as I have in comparison, feelings of inadequacy but we will not allow our children and isolation arise. How can I talk to do the same. We must understand to my parents about this when they them even if we were never have endured much worse? Do they understood. think I am just overreacting about the “anxiety” I face? These questions remain unanswered.