Remember Yourself..

Women suffer. By habit, choice and circumstance. We feel inadequate most of the time. As home makers we wish we were out there, validating ourselves by earning money. When we have careers, we worry that the kids are growing up without good food on the table, without ironed clothes, without supervised homework. We don’t ever want to fail as primary nurturers of relationships. We can’t forgive ourselves if we cannot get everything right. Our kids, our  homes, our marriages, our waist line. We feel accountable for everything. We forgive ourselves nothing. And this is not unique to a certain kind of a woman but to most women, most of the time, just about anywhere. I have discussions with my house help who has raised three kids alone and works despite bad health and increasing age because she can’t stay at home without feeling hemmed in by her thoughts.  If her son is unwell for a day, she cannot  stop talking about it but feels that no one owes her any concessions if she is not well. I know of women in great jobs who feel guilty all the time about  gaps in their relationships and the care of  loved ones at home.

So do women who seemingly have it all, feel any different? I remember interviewing a young, gawky girl called Nafisa Joseph sometime in the 90s. She was basking in the afterglow of her Miss India win. Clad in a white churidar, with her hair loose and her eyebrows unplucked, she was unabashedly, confidently ungroomed by today’s standards but still radiated a joy for life that no amount of pruning, plucking and polishing can imbue you with. I was struck by how warm she was, how rooted in the reality of who she was, what she wanted from life and I remember walking away with a last request, “Don’t change.” I still remember what she said with a smile, “I won’t!” And yet, years later, something did change because one lonely night Nafisa Joseph ended her life over a disintegrating relationship. Just the way model Viveka Babaji did some time back. How integral a man is to a woman’s sense of self was also recounted by Oprah Winfrey and she spoke about  the years when she was battling  low self-esteem and dealing with relationships that made her feel less than who she was. She recounted a low point when she was curled up on the floor, feeling suicidal, recalling a man who had said, “You know, baby, the problem with you is that you think you are someone.”

Winfrey got past that one moment and became SOMEONE years later, inside and out for the whole world to see. This is a moment that girls like Nafisa and Viveka must learn to negotiate. They must learn to get past that night that seems interminable because beyond that is the dawn of a new self, a new life, a new love maybe. When she was enjoying hard won contentment both personally and professionally, Oprah was to share another lesson, “Love is supposed to be simple not painful. It is supposed to make you feel good. Not bad.”

Guilt is bad for mental health. And any relationship that augments guilt is bad too. Whether you have it with yourself or with someone else. Any relationship that undermines you is not a relationship. But how many webs a vulnerable woman’s mind weaves as she clings to the shreds of a dream, hoping that something will change, that the man who does not value what she has to give will knock at the door with roses and say, “I love you. I was wrong. I am sorry.” When we don’t love ourselves, how can we ask someone else to love us?

The world today demands unrealistic perfection from women. Not only should they look impossibly perfect, their lives should have no frayed edges at all. They should have doting boy friends/ husbands, a large circle of friends, a booming career, bright kids. God forbid if one of these pieces is missing. A close friend who does not have kids is never allowed to forget it. The other day I heard a middle aged man mocking a woman at a get together, “She is so nasty because her husband is not keeping her happy!”

No word ofcourse about what drives a man to comment on a woman’s sexuality in public. Single women over 30 are subjected to the most vicious kind of Chinese whispers. Why aren’t they taken? Is something wrong with them?

And what if a woman is single after a marriage or a long term relationship? Everyone wants a piece of her story. A train wreck in someone else’s life gives people a great deal of satisfaction. It stokes their curiosity. They want to see blood, the scattered limbs of a relationship, smell the stench of a marriage gone wrong. Sometimes this is what women fear more than a broken heart. What will they say when a man openly leches at them at a function/an office/a neighbourhood and asks, “So how is your so and so? You have changed your surname, eh? Ah..your maiden name! Should I call you Ms or Mrs?” Will a  friend start sending you personal mails between her and her husband just to show how happy she is? Or will a woman you know, despite her feminist leanings, start talking about fulfilment or meaning in terms of ONLY a marriage and a man?

Well, you know what, you have a right to shrug and walk past such dirt. Don’t answer. Don’t allow anyone with soiled, curious shoes in your head. Surround yourself with the light of just one realisation that you owe your life and its truth to yourself, not to anyone else. Invest in your self. Don’t join those who judge you, question you, batter your selfhood. They don’t matter. You do. Love your life. Don’t leave it. Because in the end, when you get past the pain and the shame, you will see what no one had the eyes to see. YOU. Inviolable. And whole.

Yes, a lot is expected of us but sometimes, even if we happen to be women, we don’t have to figure anything, solve anything, learn anything, prove anything, be anything or anywhere except in the now..in a cosy corner, with a cup of tea in hand, a little music in the background, invisible hands of hope around the weary, warrior heart, protecting it from ‘what ifs’ and the pain in the past. What is done with and what is yet undone is not our concern. Who we are now and where we are now is. Look back but only to see the footprints that will tell you just how far you have come. Now, shut the din in the head and tell yourself, “I will survive this and go further.” You will. Because everything passes. The best and the worst. But you remain.  There is no forever except one. YOU.