The portrait of a son who forgot how to listen

Dear Delyara, I looked at an old photo of my mother tonight, taken on the afternoon of my university graduation in London. She was looking at me with this pure, unadulterated devotion, her eyes completely filled with the belief that I was going to do massive, honorable things with my life. She doesn't know about the compromises I've made since then. She doesn't know about the cold, calculated shortcuts, the financial debts, or the mornings where I can barely look at my own face in the bathroom mirror because the reflection looks so hollow. I’ve become so obsessed with the mechanics of survival, with building a thick layer of armor against the world, that I’ve lost the soft, generous heart she spent her entire life protecting. I am terrified that if she saw the real me tonight, the unedited version, the pride in her eyes would turn into a quiet, devastating grief.