Permission to dream

Twenty years ago, without the will of anyone wanting me to come to life, I was born. I, who now stares into the deep abyss of the universe unafraid but still gets scared while looking at my own reflection. I, who shouts out her mad glory in the face of the world and everyone in it am so disheartened by my own silence that I forget to recognize my own voice. I, who buzzes like a maniac spreading energy to even the saddest souls am so tired today that it is hard to keep on breathing every second.

This is what I call an existential crisis, an awakening, a truth that I was trying to avoid, a conflict I had always run away from. The day I decide to take one step towards my own independence, those who care will come like a cocoon and try to envelop me back into the shell I had lived in as a caterpillar for so long. But not today, because I need this time to get used to the fact that my decision will never be my own again. And not today, because I have to trample my dreams with both feet and get used to society and world as it is. And not today, because what did I ever get from being faithful, loyal, patient, honest, obedient? A person who always does as she is told will always remain that person and any effort to break out of that habit will be met with forceful resistance because it isn’t a society I have created but it is a society I live in. I have allowed such madness to be a part of who I am and now I complain as it cages me and tries to enslave me.

I had to cry, it was inevitable, the bursting of the dam and all the emotions repressed inside me. The day I became numb and indifferent wasn’t much different from today. That day, I killed whatever feelings I had inside me. Today I was killing away my reasons to live so I could exist not as the person I am but the shell of it who wakes up in the morning without a desire or a cause but for the simple reason that I must. Today I give fire to the passion inside me, not to burn it brighter but to cremate it inside me, with just a numb nostalgia for the ashes which I might revisit twenty years from now, the day I die.

Truth hurts and you are unaware of it even as it stares you in your face until someone spits it into your eye and you are forced to see the reality of what always has been. You are not born a woman, you are just born different. Womanhood is a social construct that tells you how you must live your life. In the male-dominated society, you must adhere to the already laid down norms of asking permission before you take a shit and taking criticism for every little thing. But it is alright, you are a woman, it is your job, to clean up the mess that you see in the room, but not in the world because the shit in people’s head, you need permission to clean from the same shithead who taught you, you are a woman and thus as weak as could be.

I am not allowed out of my home, to walk the streets late at night, lest I be raped. The rape that the men in my house do to my head, mindfucking it every now and then falls under no category at all. I am not allowed to stay at my friend’s place because ‘I am your father and I said so.’ And the way I keep asking for a reason is unbecoming of an obedient woman, how loose a character do I have to question authority? How shameless, mannerless, unwomanly am I to ask ‘Why’?

There should be a defined limit to see dreams for us women because no matter how restricted our approach, our minds fly out open into the skies, leaving us with nothing but desire. A desire to be free, out and about, travelling the world with everything in our reach. Guess no one taught us, that you need to ask before spreading your wings and you almost always won’t ever get the permission to.