By April 2020, the world outside had slowed, but inside our home, tensions only accelerated. The pandemic forced everyone to stay indoors, yet the emotional distances in our family stretched farther than ever.
Every day, I tried to hold the emotional temperature of the house steady. I answered questions about the virus, reassured our younger daughter that New York’s nightmares weren’t following her here, monitored the smallest shifts in our older daughter’s mental health, and reminded our son to give himself grace for losing the structure he once depended on. All the while, I hoped my husband would notice the depth of my efforts to keep everyone afloat.
But his attention was elsewhere. After he pushed our son away in March 2020 by yelling at him over a routine insurance decision and treating his honesty as defiance; he left our first-born elder daughter without the support she needed. The house was full, yet I had never felt so alone. Caregiver fatigue is invisible until it breaks you. I didn’t cry often — not because I was strong, but because there wasn’t time. When everyone needs reassurance, you push your own emotions down until they calcify. Some nights I lay awake wondering: How long can I keep doing this? Why doesn’t he see me? Why didn’t he notice that all of our children came to me, leaned on me, depended on me?
Partnership isn’t about dividing chores; it’s about dividing emotional weight. There’s a loneliness that only exists in marriage: being beside someone who doesn’t ask how you’re holding up. His energy went outward—to seva, to sangat, to everyone outside the house - while I stitched our family together with tired hands. And no one stitched me.
The first cracks in a family don’t always come from conflict; sometimes they come from absence. Looking back, this was the quiet beginning of my emotional exhaustion — the whisper before the scream. Families don’t fall apart overnight. They break in the moments when one person gives everything and the other gives almost nothing in return.
Before the major break, before the chaos and panic, there were small signs - subtle, scattered, easy to dismiss. Our older daughter had always been sensitive, intuitive, deeply emotional. She felt the world intensely: its joys, its fears, its disappointments.
By March 2020, that sensitivity turned inward. At first, the changes were small. She spent more time in her room, her sleep became irregular, her moods shifted quickly, and her thoughts grew heavier and harder to redirect. I noticed immediately, the way a mother notices a slight limp or subtle cough. Not panic, not fear - just awareness. But her father didn’t see it. Not because he didn’t care, but because he had already begun withdrawing emotionally after the fallout with our son.
Mental health declines quietly until it doesn’t. Early signs are like shadows—quick, confusing, gone before you can place them. I tried to talk to her gently, check in, observe her routines, and ask soft questions without overwhelming her. Meanwhile, I watched the house around her: tension between father and son, stress of quarantine, lack of emotional warmth, silence between us as partners. These were ingredients feeding an invisible storm, and I could feel her absorbing all of it. Her father’s response was frustration, not curiosity.
When she became irritable, he called it disrespect. When she withdrew, he called it laziness. When she questioned him, he called it attitude. When she showed anxiety, he called it overreaction. What she needed was regulation. What she received was correction. He treated her emotions as misbehavior; a pattern sharpened under confinement. Every time she tried to express herself, he shut her down with “You’re not listening.” She was listening—just too much, too deeply. High sensitivity is not weakness, but in the wrong environment, it becomes a wound.
What we didn’t know then was that this was just the beginning. The earliest whisper of a storm we were unprepared for. A warning sign we couldn’t yet interpret. She wasn’t breaking yet, but the cracks were forming; and I was the only one who noticed.
Her struggles with clothing, privacy, and authority escalated. A brief incident over her shorts,exposing part of her butt, spiraled into father's yelling, confrontation, and fear. She responded in the only way she could - defiance and boundaries. Her father reacted with frustration and instability, pushing her further away emotionally. Even my mediation, my interventions, and my attempts to explain cultural perspectives could not bridge the growing divide.
These moments weren’t isolated. They were patterns; cracks growing silently in the foundation of our family. Financial stress, emotional strain, and lack of partnership combined to create a house full of people yet devoid of emotional safety. Isolation became the new normal. Attempts to rebuild connection often failed, and even when I tried to facilitate conversation or encourage reconciliation, my husband’s response remained dismissive. Next
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