there i was, a jobless graduate living under my parents life, and even my breathing seemed like a disappointment to my parents. i could be eating and my father would throw me a disapproving glance and say you are supposed to dip your dosa really into your chutney, like really soak it and thats how you eat it. I mumbled silently in agreement and thought ..Dip your own fucking dosa in your own fucking chutney however you want! and went about eating my dosa in whatever the hell way i want anyway and wondered about who made all these rules of life. not the legal ones, but evrything else. I am grateful for them putting food in front of me, but can you love someone purely coz you are grateful. can that be the basis of true emotion. i exist because of my parents and i live, breath and eat whatever they have provided for me, but does dat mean i should be their slave, sacrifice all my dreams and live out my days to their every whim… get the job they want, marry the person they want, even the personality they would agree to and be the trophy daughter they always wanted. would they be happy then, could i keep my sanity living like dat. and would they be happy if i loose my sanity being their trophy kid, then i thought i dont feel sane right now, and i am far from their ideal. then i think i shouldnt loose myself to self pity, as the dancer heroine says to benjamin after losing her legs in that benjamin button movie. people have it worse. But i felt so stuck, as if my life wasnt mine anymore, like i wasnt mine anymore.
p.s … 25 year old grown ass women shouldnt call themselves kid, but i got to make as much choices about my life as a kid does, so maybe the immaturity in referencing myself should be excused.
Today started out as a pretty good day, a rarity these days… i was not having the familiar ache in my head or didnt feel that fog of pain or sadness in my brain… i was finishing a light weight novel, perfect for me right now, a coming of age book about a troubled girl contemplating life. It was the book equivalent of a warm hug. good books are always like a love affair… i have heard someone say. And i was reveling in the effect of the book and thought about how apt it was. Its passionate, intimate.. leaves you with bittersweet memories.. sometimes even longing to be in its embrace again. to be a part of you forever.
anyway my day was too good to be true and my bubble was once again broken by my dad, finally managing to catch me without running away ( we played cat and mouse in our house, me always avoiding spending too much time at the same space, lest me say something and make me go cuckoo in the head all over again.. it just life was difficult, my head was messed up and my tolerance was way low right now… i was carrying myself around like a fragile thing thats just been taped back together, not yet molded into something stronger, dreading even the lightest push can push me back into this abyss) anyway he came and asked me how i wouldnt marry yet another boy he had found, and went on restlessly about how i am too old, too ugly, howw we are only middle class, how i couldnt possibly get anyone better, how your carreer shouldnt be the only thing you should be focusing on. first few minutes i survived saying fuck it repeatedly in my mind, then the chanting of my mind stopped and his words started hitting me like big speeding trucks. He went on to narrate how he had met many friends who had daughters who were so eligible yet unmarried, how i am not even near good looking as them, how we arent even nearly as rich and how screwed i would be if i put off marriage for now and went for my post graduation. and how being a graduated doctor is worth nothing these days. thanks for making me feel stellar again dad, i was thinking why i wasnt in pain today, i was feeling weird dat the day was goin so well. I am aware of my non existent career, my empty pockets, my mediocre face n my dying ovaries ( my mothers phrase ) , i didnt need to be reminded of them. i felt useless and unworthy all over again. At 25, i felt older than 60. torn btw my desire for freedom, my guilt for wanting a different path than my parents wanted, i again felt suffocatingly stuck. Freedom takes courage, i had read somewhere. But i was a coward.
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