17/06/2026
The first time I forgot my own birthday, I laughed about it. My husband thought it was funny. My children didnât even know. The day came and went like every other day in our house.
Breakfast, School runs, Laundry, Dinner, Bath time, Bedtime stories.
And somewhere in between all of that, I disappeared. Not all at once but Slowly
The way a photograph fades when itâs left in the sun too long. I was thirty-two years old, standing in my kitchen at 11:47 p.m., eating cold rice straight from a pot because it was the first thing I had managed to eat all day.
The house was finally quiet. The toys were off the floor. The dishes were washed. Everyone was asleep. Everyone except me.
Sleep and I had stopped being friends months ago. Maybe years. I couldnât remember. I only knew that every night my body was exhausted while my mind refused to rest.
Did I lock the door? Did I pay the electricity bill? What if the baby gets sick? What if something happens to my husband on his way to work? What if Iâm a terrible mother?
The questions came every night. Like clockwork. Like visitors who never knocked before entering.
I never called it anxiety. Mothers donât have time to name things. We just carry them.
The way we carry groceries. Children. Expectations. Silence.
One evening my daughter handed me a drawing she made at school.
âMummy, this is you.â
I smiled. Then I looked closer. She had drawn herself. Her brother. Her father.
And beside them stood a woman with no face. No eyes, mouth, smile. Just a body. I stared at the paper.
âWhy doesnât Mummy have a face?â
My daughter shrugged. âBecause youâre always busy.â
I laughed. The kind of laugh people use when they donât know theyâre about to cry. That night, after everyone slept, I sat alone at the dining table and looked at that drawing again.
No face. No identity. No person.
Just someone moving from one responsibility to another. And the painful thing was that she wasnât wrong. A few years earlier, after my son was born, something inside me had changed.
Everyone called it normal. âYouâre just tired, Every new mother goes through this It will pass.â
So I believed them. I ignored the days when I couldnât stop crying. The mornings when getting out of bed felt like lifting a truck. The guilt that sat on my chest every time I looked at my baby and felt more exhausted than joyful. The nights I stared at the ceiling wondering why everyone else seemed to be handling motherhood better than me.
I never said any of it out loud. Because good mothers donât complain. At least thatâs what I thought. So I smiled in family photos.
Showed up at birthdays. Cooked meals.
Helped with homework. Answered everyoneâs questions. And slowly stopped asking myself one important question.
How are you? Years passed. Then one Tuesday afternoon, something small happened. So small nobody else would remember it. I was folding clothes when my son asked me a simple question.
âMummy, what do you like?â
I looked up. âWhat do you mean?â
âWhat do you like doing?â I opened my mouth. Then closed it. My son waited.
I couldnât answer. Not because I didnât want to. Because I genuinely didnât know.
For years, I had known everyoneâs favorites.
My husbandâs favorite meal. My daughterâs favorite color. My sonâs favorite cartoon.
But my own answer?Gone.
Lost somewhere between school fees and grocery lists. That scared me more than anything. Not the anxiety. Not the exhaustion. The fact that I no longer knew myself. That evening, after the children slept, I walked outside. Just outside the gate. Nothing dramatic.
No life-changing speech. No grand decision. I just walked. For ten minutes.
The night air felt different. The world felt bigger than my living room. Bigger than my worries.
The next day I walked again. Then again.
Weeks later, those ten minutes became twenty. Then thirty. Sometimes I listened to music. Sometimes I listened to nothing.
For the first time in years, I wasnât somebodyâs mother. Somebodyâs wife. Somebodyâs problem solver.
I was just me. The change wasnât immediate. Healing never is. Some mornings were still heavy. Some nights were still restless.
There were days anxiety sat beside me at breakfast and followed me around all afternoon. But little by little, I started noticing things. The sunrise. The taste of hot tea. The sound of my own laughter.
I started reading again. One chapter at a time. I started calling old friends.
Replying to messages. Saying yes when people asked how I was doing instead of automatically saying âIâm fine.â And one evening, something happened that I still think about.
My husband found me sitting on the balcony after dinner. Just sitting. Not cleaning. Not washing dishes. Not folding clothes. Just sitting. He looked confused.
Then he asked, âArenât you going to finish the kitchen?â For a moment, the old version of me almost stood up.
Almost apologized. Almost rushed inside.
Instead I said quietly, It can wait.
He stared at me. Then nodded.
And strangely enoughâŚ
The world didnât end. The plates survived.
The house survived. Everyone survived.
Including me.
Months later, my daughter came home from school with another drawing.â âMummy, look.â
I unfolded the paper. There we were again.
Her. Her brother. Her father. And me.
But this time I had eyes. A nose. A smile.
Even curly hair that looked nothing like my actual hair.
I laughed.
âIs this really me?â
She grinned.
âYes.â
I looked at the picture for a long time. Then I asked the question I had asked before. âWhy does Mummy have a face now?â
My daughter looked at me as if the answer was obvious. âBecause youâre back.â
I donât remember crying. I only remember holding that paper against my chest while tears fell anyway. Because she was right. I was back. Not the version of me that existed before motherhood.
That woman was gone. Life had changed her.
But somewhere along the way, I had learned something important. You cannot pour from an empty cup. You cannot save everyone while abandoning yourself. And being a good mother was never about disappearing.
It was about staying. Staying present. Staying human. Staying whole.
These days, the laundry still piles up. The dishes still wait. The children still need me. Life is still messy. But every now and then, I take a walk.
Read a chapter. Call a friend. Sit on the balcony and watch the evening sky.
Small things. Almost invisible things.
The kind of things nobody notices. Except the woman who spent years losing herself.
And finally learned that coming back doesnât happen all at once.
It happens slowly. The same way she disappeared.
