Mommy's little girl ain't a girl no more

Mother forgot she has a daughter.

There's a stranger living in her house. She lives in a room that once belonged to her baby girl who seemed to have disappeared years before, on a day that she got up from bed, and put on her brand new school clothes with so much care and precision, she almost looked like the perfect daughter. Her natural brown hair glowed with red and purple in the sun and it almost scared mother sometimes the way the colours rebelled against the brown.

She dropped her off at school that day and watched her daughter walk into the busy campus. Her little girl walked with such grace that was taught to her in the modelling and acting classes mother had sent her to. Her backpack hugged her close, reminding her of the priorities mother sent her to fulfill. It was her survival pack for the future. She was going to be rich. She was going to marry a handsome, rich man. She was going to be beautiful. She was going to make her mother proud.

But when mother came to pick up daughter, her daughter was no where to be found. It was on that day when mother met the stranger for the first time but did not object since the stranger looked so familiar, she could have sworn she was her daughter. However, she's come to notice that this stranger does not want what mother wants; she seems to have a mind of her own. The stranger has flaws and imperfections but she does not seem to mind and neither does she judge the imperfections of other people. The stranger has no fear of people, adventures and new experiences unlike daughter.

Whoever this stranger is, she seems to be a girl trying to get by. She's going to school and enjoying her life to the best of her abilities. She's trying to save up her money to leave and never return. This stranger wants to remain a stranger. She does not wish to be the dream the mother had and lost.

Truth be told, the stranger is the daughter. When daughter went to school that day, she tasted the fruits of adventure and excitement for the first time. The sweetness of these fruits intoxicated and addicted her to life and she no longer wished to live the one-track life she lived alone in her room. She breathed happiness for the first time and began to transform, caterpillar to butterfly. Daughter to stranger. She has a new reason to live and she isn't going to stop until her mission is fulfilled.

Mother has a new daughter. While the stranger lives in her home, eats her food and tags along on their family vacations, the mother doesn't seem to mind anymore. The new daughter will fulfill the destiny that was once her lost daughter.

It's always easy to replace what you lose.

Mishga Sohrabi