Breaking bounds!

I am a classic bastard child – an unfortunate label bestowed upon me from birth. Growing up I had to fight for a different identity. Although it was seldom verbal, but their actions weren’t silent, I was treated as a bastard child.

I am a mother now and my daughter doesn’t quite get why I don’t want more kids. Growing up I feared I’d have sad children. I am grateful my daughter desires to be a mother because it means I have won in this war. The war of fighting my emotional struggles being passed on down to my children.

A sigh of relief.

Take a young beautiful woman. She meets and falls in love with a certain man. Together they conceive a precious child and then the war breaks out. The lovers quarrel and eventually go their separate ways, but not before their poor child becomes the battlefield for many different battles and wars.

One war between the parents, another battle for self-identity and maybe another war for a future free from war.

I am trying to paint a picture for those who think bastard children are just children. They are not. They are the most rejected in the family. They are torn from within before they can even understand that there’s a life besides being broken. They don’t perform too well in society because indirectly they are taught that their existence is a shame.

When they sit with their peers, they feel unworthy. No matter how capable they are, they look around for those who break them to give them the go ahead to be capable of achieving.

Even when they are praised in public by society for whatever greatness they possess, they smile, pretending to acknowledge this (pretending to be any other thing besides broken is their second nature) – then they present this praise they received from society to their masters. Their masters are those who break them, but only they and the masters know their true roles. Society just sees a child with a parent or guardian, but only they and God know what lurks behind, away from the society’s eyes.

This poor child grows up lost. Inside there’s a desire to live a life free from the brokenness they know. They’ve seen their peers genuinely happy; excited, thriving, doing it all with their own will.

They have seen their peers achieve greatness. Following their dreams. But this poor child isn’t even sure what their own dream is – they know their masters dreams for them.

They wake up one day and decide to go for their own will too and they quickly learn there’s so much to unlearn that the master has engraved in them. This brings excitement. For once they get to taste soul satisfaction, but they still have to face their fears, that tries to quench this joy of trying to find them and the purpose for their existence.

It’s as if their eyes are finally opened. Everything is beautiful, still blurred by fear but beautiful nonetheless because for once they are seeing beyond their masters cage.