A diary entry I never meant to write…
I stood across the lane and watched my childhood torn apart.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Brick by brick.
Memory by memory. Everything a rubble.
My once beautiful home looked like an old fortress finally surrendering after years of quiet resistance. Darkness roared where laughter once lived. Fog engulfed it like funeral smoke. Walls that held birthdays, crazy barbecues, kitchen that sung praises of the meals I cooked for my brothers and my dad, rooms that used to scream with exciting arguments, were all now whispered dreams collapsed without ceremony.
It stood demolished like it never existed. Our story, our childhood ready to be overwritten like it was never scribed at all.
No goodbye.
No last walk through the rooms.
No closure.
People talk about closure like it’s a door you politely shut. But some endings don’t come with handles. They arrive like this. Sudden. Final. Unannounced.
I thought I would scream. I thought anger would rise. Instead, grief arrived quietly. Sat beside me. Stayed.
This wasn’t just a house. It was proof of who I was, it was proof of who my family was before the world rearranged all of us. Before getting married changed everything for me like I was infested with a disease that no longer put me in the same bloodline as the rest of the family.
Biology denied? Check. Genealogy dismissed? Check. I am now the adopted child whose parents loved her more than an average parents of an average household would love an average girl child. That is the ideal benchmark to set as parents after all!
Before society decided for. me that I belonged somewhere else now. It held my childhood self in small corners. A chipped tile. A staircase I raced up. A window I leaned on when life felt too loud.
Now it was dust.
The transactions had happened in secret. Papers signed. Decisions made. Without me. By the time I found out, the fortress had already fallen.
My mother knew.
My brother knew.
Everyone knew.
No one told me.
Not because they are villains. I see that now. It was fear. Discomfort. That old family habit of keeping the peace even when it costs someone their truth. Silence, in families like ours, is taught as loyalty.
Especially when a daughter has learned to speak, especially when she is woke, a fighter against gender disparity one that she was never supposed to be.
I don’t think my parents feared losing money.
I think they feared losing control.
Because this was never about inheritance for me. It was about belonging. About roots. About knowing I still had a place that didn’t change when my marital status did.
In our culture, daughters are “given away.” As if we are objects, not people. And once you are given away, your claim to your own people, your own family, your own blood, starts to feel… negotiable.
So the house was sold.
And then demolished.
Quietly. Cleanly. Efficiently.
Healing forced me to see my parents as a product of generations, not monsters. They have learned to love with conditions. Ownership disguised as care. Authority mistaken for protection.
Pain doesn’t need villains to exist.
There were days I questioned everything.
My place.
My worth.
Whether blood also comes with terms and conditions.
Maybe I was only loved until I grew a voice.
Maybe daughters are temporary in their parents’ homes.
These thoughts scared me. But they also woke me up.
Because grief, if you let it, evolves you.
Standing across the lane, watching my house fall, something shifted inside me. I realised this wasn’t just loss. It was liberation too. Not the loud kind. The quiet one. The kind that happens when you stop begging systems to accept you.
The house may be gone.
But I am still rooted. In myself now.
My solace is intention.
I will raise my daughter differently. She will know her home is hers, not borrowed. That love doesn’t expire when she grows up. That her voice will never threaten me. I will not sell her childhood behind her back. I will not make silence my shield.
She will know she belongs. Fully. Always.
Maybe that’s the real inheritance.
Not walls. But wisdom. And I am thankful for my parents for this inheritance of wisdom that they will leave behind for me — their inadequacy, disparity towards my gender will be my biggest weapon in treading my and my baby’s future as a mom.
Tonight, I write this like a diary entry I never planned. Something I would have hidden in my room, that blush-pink walled room with butterflies and my artworks that expressed that I am born to ‘Defy!’ the norms, if the room still existed. Maybe Anne Frank would understand. How spaces hold us. How losing them changes us forever.
My family home is gone. But I am still here.
Choosing evolution over bitterness.
Consciousness over conditioning.
Love over legacy.
And that, I think, is how I rebuild.
Not with bricks.
But with courage.
Reflective Author’s Note
This piece isn’t just about a house.
It’s about how quietly patriarchy shows up in our living rooms.
How family silence can hurt without intending to.
How women are taught to outgrow their roots instead of honour them.
If you’re reading this and it stirred something in you, you’re not alone.
Maybe you lost a home.
Maybe you lost a voice.
Maybe you’re learning to choose yourself for the first time.
Let’s be the generation that breaks these patterns gently but firmly.
Let’s raise daughters who don’t have to earn belonging.
Let’s build families where love doesn’t come with conditions.
If this resonates, share your story with us at editor@puya.life or leave comments below.
Start a conversation. Be brave enough to do things differently.
#BeTheChangeMaker
