“I don’t even have a degree in my hand yet and my mom’s already out there, hunting for marriage proposals. I told her once, crying even, not to do this. Not to plan my life like that. Not now. Maybe not ever. I want to live alone. Find my own way. I’ve already made up my mind.
But today, while she was on the phone with one of her friends, she started dropping hints again. Loud enough for me to hear. “Girls these days have no respect,” she said. “They think love marriages are fashionable. They have no idea what real values are. Dating before marriage? So cheap. Western culture has ruined them.”
She wasn’t talking to me directly. But she wanted me to hear every word.
What she doesn’t know is that I’ve seen their version of a traditional marriage up close. All my life I’ve watched them fight. Real fights. Screaming, doors slamming, long silences that made my stomach hurt. Now even a loud laugh from the TV makes me flinch. I’m in therapy for PTSD. Actual trauma. But when I bring it up, they look at me like I’m being dramatic. “Fights are normal,” they say. “That’s just how family life is.”
No. That’s how your family life was. And I’m not signing up for the same.
I wish they’d stop pretending that just because something is old, it must be right. Just because they married strangers and stayed together doesn’t mean it was happy. Doesn’t mean it worked. My mom can’t stand the idea of love marriages. She gossips about other families, says their kids are disrespectful, ruined, following the wrong path.
She doesn’t know I’m in love. She doesn’t know I’ve already decided I’m not doing things her way.
One of my cousins got married the way they wanted her to: Arranged. She ended up with a man who tore her down, first with words, then with his hands. And even then, the family waited and watched. When they finally helped her leave, it was too late. She was pregnant. They pushed her into an abortion she didn’t want. She cried for weeks. And they still had the audacity to say, “It was karma.”
But if someone in a love marriage goes through one tiny fight, the whole world jumps in to say, “We told you so.”
I’m not saying parents should take blame for every decision we make. I just want to be respected as an adult. That’s it. Not treated like a child who can’t think. Whether we’re boys or girls, they want control forever. It’s suffocating.
I want to live but not like a rebel and not like a saint: Just like a person who has the freedom to choose.
I know they love me. I love them too. That’s what makes it worse sometimes. You want to be close but not at the cost of yourself. I’m not going to give up my life to fulfill traditions that never made sense to me. I’m not here to be a robot ticking off boxes — marriage, kids, obedience, silence.
So yeah. I’m moving out soon. One more year and I’ll have my own income and my own space. I’ll come back only when I know they see me as a full person, not a project to fix or a story to write for their friends.
I just needed to say this somewhere. Because no one in my real life ever asked how I feel.
But I’m saying it now. Out loud. Because I’m not alone. I know that now.”
— From a college student
Editor’s Note:
Some stories don’t belong to one person. They live in the silence between generations, in bedrooms where decisions are made without asking, in the ache of wanting to be loved and free. This monologue is shaped from one such story, shared online by a stranger, but felt by many.
If you saw yourself in these words, know this: Your longing to be understood is not a betrayal of your family. It’s just human.
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