Don’t Believe It.

“It’s going to be okay. It’s not exactly fair but it’ll be all right. You’re not 3 or 4 or 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 or 11 or 12 or 13 or 14 or 15 0r 16 or 17 or 18 or 19 or 20 or 21 or 22 or 23 or 24 years old anymore. You’re not helpless. This is not the way things will always be, because you stepped out of that circle and saw that things were different. You were different.

Even if, there is that inexplicable sadness that jumps up within you during a coffee break or at home after work or while sitting in on a meeting or laughing at a friend’s joke. Even with the claws of all those years sunk deep within you, you’ve learnt to move and feel and breathe like you are whole. So don’t think for a second that you’re stuck again just because of geography and logistics. Those can change. Like they did before.

You’re learning and this is old, this is triggering, but this a new you, the old you left long back so instead of doing what the old you did, find a new way. Step away, walk away, breathe different air. You’re already doing well.

I’m rooting for you, not because victory is guaranteed but because even in defeat you will be something phenomenal, even when reduced to feeling small you’re already taking the next big breath to stand tall, stand bigger. It’s only a matter of time.

If you don’t believe it, don’t. It’s true either way.”

Fragile

I haven’t posted here in a while. Wish I could say I’ve been writing at the very least but no dice. However, it’s been a…week. I did write something to sum up the major part of it though. The words just up and flew from my heart and onto the screen like they’d been perched, waiting for a signal.

Here’s what I wrote:

Some days, even a look

will cut me crying

like I’m made of tears.

Some days, the sea,

blue, green, grey, silver, gold,

in all its hues will turn stranger.

Some days, there won’t be a

single landmark or sign familiar

from the past to lessen the feeling of lost.

Some days I will fight something

within me but it’ll look like I’m fighting you.

Some days…I ought to apologise

but I am unable to breathe out a coherent sound.

On days like that, can you please be gentle?

Because I break hard and easy, who knows why.

And I’m used to the alternative:

collecting myself to get back on my feet.

But it’d be nice,

on some days,

to have someone

treat me the way I feel

from marrow out to the tip of the hair on my skin:

Fragile.

Unlearning

Often, because I live within days that sprint through time in one go, a lot of things get overdue. Like waxing.

Before the pandemic, I would never touch a razor because my mom always told me that the hair growth is harder, which basically meant the hair were difficult to wax off. But, well, when a virus gets the whole world…anyway the point is I couldn’t go to the salon for waxing, and so when I’d lift my arms up in front of the mirror and see under-arm hair, I’d cringe. Like want-to-shut-my-eyes-and-back-away-from-the-mirror kind of cringe.

I never questioned the rightness of ripping hair out from underneath my arm. Almost like it was written in some holy scriptures as the word of God. Maybe because I never saw a model or actress with under-arm hair. None of the women in pageants had hair like that. None of the women other women saw as beautiful and as the ideal of femininity had underarm hair, same for the women that men were crazy about. On the other hand, most times the reactions of men and women to under-arm hair were those of disgust whether in comments or videos or even among some of my male friends. I saw that, absorbed it and mirrored it until it was my own reaction. Hair, except on your head and eyebrows, is disgusting (what weird creatures human beings are). Even when I understood that technically it’s one of many beauty double standards, I just couldn’t do anything but shrink away from the thought of publicly displaying under-arm hair.

Recently I found this Instagram account of a person who is a young model and into breaking beauty norms. And they literally put up pictures of their hairy armpits. So my first reaction was split into three – a part of me cringed and stared, another part of me was in awe of how brave they were and adored them for it, a larger part of me was GRATEFUL to them. Because they just took the pressure off to be a certain way, a way that in my head I still consider ugly (and never ever underestimate what the fear of feeling ugly will make a person do). Over the next few days I saw all their posts – old ones and of course, new. It was their thing to showcase under-arm hair. And a strange thing began to happen. The more I saw it, the more the ‘cringe’ factor lessened. The more I focused on them overall, the beaming, cheeky smile knowing they were wrecking enforced beauty standards, the gorgeous hair, the beautiful words they used, those under-arm hair became more and more a part of a beautiful story. I’m not saying years of conditioning will go in a few days of following them, but…if we see more people do the ‘odd’ things, not mainstream things often enough – those things will become mainstream and normal too.

I had a similar journey with how it became easier for me to relate to same-sex couples. Let me clarify, I have never ever been homophobic, but I have only seen and heard heterosexual stories, narratives, myths, legends etc. growing up. While I comprehend the right of people to love who they love without fear or judgement, it wasn’t that I understood it like I understood heterosexual love (which isn’t surprising since I identify with it, but even so, empathy is like a sixth limb for me and to not be able to wrap my head around something just because it wasn’t my story caught me by surprise). It was, unexpectedly, my foray into K-pop stan Twitter, where I became close friends with a lot of incredible gay men and women, that made me become more and more comfortable with same-sex love. I began to watch movies with such storylines and even with the ‘odd’-ness that I felt watching things go that way, I also felt like closer to understanding what a friend from Twitter told me, “You love a person, not a gender.”

This is why representation is important. When you see images of women with under-arm hair, modelling, or women with gap between their teeth being hailed as gorgeous actresses, or ‘fat’ women and men being body confident like how recently Jonah Hill was while surfing and enjoying his day at the beach, or two women kissing, or two men flirting, the more you see it, the more normal it becomes, the more you get over hesitations, discomfort, and inability to understand. All you need to do is keep an open mind and unlearn what you’ve been taught as the limited, hurtful ‘should be’s by a whole lot of people. Unlearn it, because it’s worth understanding this big, beautiful world out there with more colours than we know now.

Boneless To Having Bones

Honestly, at 32, my life was supposed to be completely different. It was so certain – that different life – that it felt as if I lived it in the past and when I arrived at the future in the present, it had been stolen. Like I’d solved the equation of life in an inspired burst of creativity on the chalkboard and by morning some evil delinquents had erased the solution, and there was no way to remember it.

So I ached all over today, in that ancient way that the heart does for the whole body. From work to romantic love to family to friends – everything was activated. Currently dealing with company job portal rejections – a robot egged on by some over-worked HR who probably made a split second decision on my resumé based on whether they’d eaten breakfast that morning or not. Heck it could’ve been the robot acting alone – Skynet indeed. Honestly, as far as the light could see, I was tailor-made for those roles, the right skill-sets too…so what went wrong? My resumé seems pretty good as much as a document can be good to encapsulate a living, breathing, dynamic person. So what the fuckinsons?

Dating – a nope so big, it is the queen of big land.

Family – dad’s falling into old patterns again which is triggering to say the least. When I say triggering I mean it makes my inner Hulk walk alongside Eeyore (the donkey from Winnie The Pooh for the uninitiated). It keeps me up at night.

Friends – my heart breaks for my friend who is going through a tough time with her dad being unwell, critically so. I can only pray for him.

On a usual day, I’ll find some energy to use my bones. Today I felt like a boneless flesh suit.

The anger at my father especially is sapping, it takes root like some primeval curse that refuses to relent on its hold. I want control back. My mother doesn’t help by insisting he be allowed that power to be asked. Which is why the job becomes necessary too, it is supposed to give me the opportunity to be able to ask for nothing. But it’s never that black and white either is it? The man loves me, and has done a lot for me. I wish we had clear cut villains sometimes, things would be easier then.

Even with days like today, I’ve always been the girl, woman, person who can and does. And I say this from a dark place, not feeling at all like such a girl, woman, person. But maybe that’s what 32 years of knowing yourself a little does – it tells you that like countless times before, you’re eventually going to get out of this funk, put your shoes on and show up even when it’s not easy. It’s going to be a fail, fail, fail until you succeed thing for me. Got to keep my chin up during the fail, fail, fail part though.