The Surrogate Heart ❤️

In the quiet hours before the sun hits the skyscrapers of a city that will never be my home, I am already awake. I am folding laundry that belongs to children who do not share my blood. I am preparing school lunches for a boy who calls me by my first name while my own son, four thousand miles away, is eating breakfast prepared by an auntie who tells him stories about a mother he only knows as a face on a glowing screen.

​This is the confession of a ghost. Because when you are a migrant mother, you stop being a person and start being a transaction.

​The Geography of Guilt
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The world calls us "resilient." They call us "heroes of the economy." But they don’t see the mental gymnastics required to keep your heart beating when it is physically located in a different time zone. I am a mother who provides everything—shoes, tuition, medicine, a roof—except my presence.

​The struggle isn’t just the long hours or the aching feet from standing in someone else’s kitchen. It is the sensory deprivation. I know the exact scent of the detergent my employer likes, but I can no longer remember the specific weight of my daughter’s head on my shoulder. I know the nap schedule of a stranger’s toddler, but I have to ask a neighbor on WhatsApp if my own child is still afraid of the dark.

​Raising the Future of Others
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There is a specific, jagged pain in being paid to be a surrogate heart. Every day, I pour my patience, my playfulness, and my care into children who will one day outgrow me and forget my name. I soothe their tantrums and celebrate their milestones. I am the first person they see when they wake up and the last person to tuck them in.

​And every time I kiss their foreheads, a part of me feels like a thief. I am stealing moments that belong to my own children and giving them to the highest bidder. It is an exchange that makes sense on a spreadsheet but feels like a slow-motion car crash in the soul. I am raising the future of a wealthy nation while my own children grow up in the gaps of my absence.

​The Digital Umbilical Cord
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We live through the phone. We parent through pixels. I have "attended" birthdays via a grainy video connection, watching my children blow out candles while I sit in a cramped staff room, muted so they don't hear the sound of a city that doesn't want me.

​The mental strain is a constant low-level hum. If they get sick, I am the one who pays the doctor, but I am not the one who holds the cool cloth to their forehead. If they fail a test, I am the one who hears the crying, but I cannot reach through the glass to wipe the tears. You become a voice in the ear, a balance in a bank account, a promise of a "someday" that keeps getting pushed further down the road.

​The Physicality of Absence
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My body is here, but it is performing a script. My hands do the work of a mother, but they are hollow. People ask, "How can you leave them?" as if it were a choice between a vacation and a chore. They don't understand that for many of us, leaving is the only way to keep them alive. It is a sacrifice of the spirit to save the body.

​I work so they can have a life I never had, but in doing so, I have missed the life they are having. I am the builder of a house I will never sleep in, the gardener of a life I will only see in photographs.

​The Cost of the Remittance
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At the end of the month, the money goes back. The "remittance" is sent, the fees are paid, and for a moment, I feel the satisfaction of a provider. But as the screen confirms the transfer, the silence in my room grows louder.

​I am raising the world’s children for a paycheck, while someone else raises mine for love. It is a trade I made to give them a future, but every night I wonder: when I finally go back, will they even recognize the woman who worked so hard to become a stranger to them?

"Daylight is coming to claim the quiet, but these words stay with you. If you enjoyed this journey into the midnight hours, leave a heart or a tip to keep the candles burning.

Sleep well—if you can.

— The Night Writer."