Punching Bag

December 26 2025

This is going to be another post reminiscing on the past, and my present self possibly assigning too much meaning to an incident that’s wedged in my brain. My English teacher in 9th or 10th standard wrote ‘Punching Bag’ on the blackboard and asked all of us to come forward and write what came to mind when we read the phrase. I forgot what I wrote, but everyone made literal connections like ‘boxing’. Maybe someone wrote ‘anger’. Then she went to the board and wrote ‘Mother’.

I’ve been meaning to blog my thoughts on this memory for months, but I have a renewed interest as I make the decision to choose whom I love and marry despite my mother (and father’s) disapproval. As the emotional manipulation, blackmail and abuse reaches the worst it’s ever been, I try to remember to not treat my mother as a punching bag. Not for the reason my teacher intended (to always show grace for mothers despite abuse), but because I need to grow and flourish mentally. I understand how my mother is a product of a traumatic society and politics, but socio-political understanding can’t solve personal problems. The personal is political, but solving interpersonal conflict requires people to reflect and change. My mother can’t do that because she doesn’t want to.

A few weeks ago, Sohla El-Waylly blogged about her experiences being labelled difficult at work, and I cried reading about her upbringing:

I grew up in an extremely conservative family and only interacted with a limited group of people with similar views until I reached adulthood. My life was small and secluded. They were all immigrants from Bangladesh, away from their families and homes in a new, often hostile, country. They did what they thought was protecting us, demanding full control over their children. I never handled it well…It’s an uneasy thing believing that your mother will only love you if you do what she wants. When my parents found out I had a boyfriend in college, they stood outside my dorm room on their knees, crying and screaming, hollering my name…My mother was so embarrassed by my divorce that on my wedding day to Ham she apologized to his father for having to take me, this difficult girl, into his family.

She understands why her family behaved the way they did, doesn’t excuse it, and marches on. I don’t know how she does it, but I have to as well. Accept that my parents won’t change, will continue to manipulate and hurt me, and that I need to maintain my sanity and try to be there for them as a son. Somehow.