It will come to you as a sudden revelation. Or in the case
of some people it will probably never come at all. Only the annoying thinkers
are plagued with the burden of analysing life and retracing one’s steps or
looking over the shoulder endlessly. I am one such idiot and no matter how hard
I try to not do any of that, the thoughts continue to flow through my mind –
one after the other, ceaselessly battering against my defences. My revelation
was simple though this time. It hit me that I have never dared to follow my dream
simply because I was too bothered about my duties and responsibilities.
Yes its true that one has to live in this society and do
certain things in certain ways. If you are a young girl, you get married off
after college. If you get married, you must have children. If you have
children, you must look after them. If you are brilliant, you will still put yourself
second to every other member of your immediate family. You will push your dream
so far on the back burner, that it will cease to exist and one fine day you
simply don’t want to go on as you are. My revelation hit me so hard, you could
have knocked me down with a feather. My upbringing that was designed to offer
little or no exposure, the conditioning that made me
feel constantly guilty, the voices all around that told me to support another
for all time but never take a moment out to say that I didn’t want to do it, I
simply wanted to live my own life – the one that I was born into alone and the
one that I will leave on my own – all of these together prevented me from
seeing the writing on the wall. You have one life. It is not to be lived for
another no matter how many people say that a real woman always sacrifices.
To write in the midst of myriad responsibilities. To be a
lone parent sixty percent of the time. To teach on days one cannot even lift one’s
head. To break down in solitude over and
over again when the days are so hard that you simply cannot cope. To sit and wonder – what on earth happened that made me do whatever
was necessary for others’ dreams and do nothing about my own! There lay the
path to self-annihilation. There is no excuse for neglecting one’s self so
totally that no one else gives a damn or if they do it is for purely selfish
reasons. Many women fall into this ridiculous trap. Just as many others
piggyback onto their spouses’ glory to boast needlessly. Neither is necessary.
Every single human being has a path to follow in life. If it means choosing it
against whatever comfort zone you have created, if it means going against the
grain, if it means giving up relationships in order to forge a true one with
yourself, you still have to do it. Or else it is as though you have never
existed.
