My Vagina Has Enough Strength.

To say that being politically correct in this generation of micro-second information-driven people is an understatement. Mind you, political correctness is not just a term that talks of educated and literate individuals, but also people who may not have the privilege that we do of increasing our knowledge. It ranges from being able to offend the “least” number of marginalised communities when you talk to your friends, to also taking a stand when your Dad says “faggot” one too many times at home. Needless to say, all of us end up abusing, insulting, and facilitating a further alienation of a significant percentage of our 7 billion population, which includes people who are homosexual, who are non-white, who have physical or mental disabilities, who are elderly, and who are female. Yes. It is women I am talking about (if it wasn’t obvious enough).

I don’t need to “grow a pair” in order to get over my social anxiety. I am not being a “sissy” by choosing to not drink tonight with my friends. I am not going to “man up” to get on top of my class academically. Basically, I DO NOT NEED A PENIS TO BE POWERFUL OR CONFIDENT OR COURAGEOUS OR BRAVE OR BELIEVE IN MYSELF. I have heard this, read this, and also, unfortunately, been a party to this misogynistic culture of promoting the penis as a symbol of strength and force. Not anymore. I do not agree with any part of it, because I have seen men run away from problems and I have seen women fight for what they believe in, even if it means putting themselves on the line. We’ve pushed you out of our bodies, men. What are you so entitled to with a piece of meat between your legs?

I am not here to emasculate you as men or to make women feel superior, but to make you aware of the language and values that you hold, and share with people, that propagate a sense of inferiority and helplessness when it comes to women. Women have been fighting for their rights to be seen, heard, and understood as equal human beings as men have always had a natural privilege of. Women have worked with, nurtured, prioritised, and encouraged millions who are related to them, but often with no recognition of her importance. Women have been on the back-burner for way too long, and every time they speak up, they are harassed, threatened, raped, murdered, burned, sold, married off, beaten, violated, or shot. Women have been silenced all throughout history, and by using slangs like “don’t be a pussy”, “have some balls”, “sissy”, “bitch”, “cunt”, or “whore”, we are dehumanising them and silencing them further. Why do you want to target them? Why do you want to make yourself feel better by putting women down? Why don’t you use a penis as a slang pejorative for someone who is considered weak or powerless or a mere sex object?

I have a vagina, and I am very proud of it. You should be, too. For me, it has enough strength to take out an entire human being, to fight for my rights, to punch bullies, to work towards my dreams, to be who I am, to be fearless, to be independent, to be powerful, to laugh, to cry, to support myself and my parents, to love, and to be brave. My vagina is courageous enough for me. I will not insult it by slangs used by ALL of us in our daily lives, and by letting people get away with it because it is “just a joke”. Call me butt-hurt (I know “meninists” and “feminist haters” already are saying it in their patriarchal minds), but I will not let you go unless you understand the sentiment and importance behind it. It just doesn’t make sense to be one of the thousands who support misogyny through their vocabulary, and then also be a hypocrite and say: “You can’t insult women. They are equal human beings.” So the next time you want me to be brave enough to face the crowd, tell me: “Ipsita, why don’t you just believe in your vagina?”. Maybe then I’ll set the stage on fire.

If You Have An Inner-Critic, This One’s For You.

3 months.

It’s been 3 months since the last time I wrote anything down. It’s 3 A.M. right now. I was taking a shower when I thought of what it is I should do because I don’t feel like calling it a night. I opened my laptop, surfed the Internet for a while, read up on a hundred different ways to be creative, and then ended up here. Again. Clearly, the kind of dedication that a blog demands is something that I haven’t been able to cultivate in myself. Time management is not my strong suit, but self-criticism is. And that is what I am going to talk about today (tonight?).

People who know me, inside and out, know that if they tell me nice things about myself, I will run in the opposite direction, mentally at least, if not physically. It is VERY hard for me to take compliments, even more so when they’re coming from someone who I may have helped in some sort of way, or who likes/liked something that I did. It isn’t limited to other people, though. I find it difficult to be nice to myself as well, because self-criticism and being blatantly harsh on myself comes WAY easily to me than appreciating the good that I also carry around. I don’t know how or when I became this way, but recently since I shifted cities and drifted away from old people and into the arms of new ones (again, figuratively), I realised that I was my own worst enemy. Chester Bennington, in one of his interviews before his death, says that “this place between my ears is a bad neighbourhood, and I should not be in it alone.” All our struggles, our emotions, our thoughts, and our fears are contained in that little space, and it gets overwhelming for me, more often than not, to deal with them. Maybe that is why I shut myself down and distract myself by completely submerging myself into other people’s lives and problems. Yes, I am a chronic rescuer. Yes, I should probably work on changing that.

The self-critic in me, at this point, wants me to hit backspace and delete everything that I have written because, guess what? It doesn’t like any part of it. It is a constant battle, to be one way or another, to act one way or another, to feel one way or another. I know I am nice, I respect people, I can be funny, I am a little smart in my own way, but that is just the cognitive part of it. The affective part of it, the “I feel good about myself” phenomenon has still not settled in my brain yet, leading me to run away from my own problems towards yours, or your parents’, or even your partner’s. I know it gets better with time, as long as I keep working towards it, but sometimes I wonder what it is that I am even working on. Is it my mind? Is it some distorted automatic negative feedback mechanism I have in my brain? Is it ever going to go? Am I ever going to love myself? These questions may sound philosophical and deep, but they are the crux of my nightmares. And I wish they would end soon.

If you have an inner voice that pulls you down and beats you to the ground over and over again, keep asking yourself: “What could possibly happen if I go against it?”. Think of the repercussions of being nice to yourself (who would have thought that would be a problem?), and then think of the consequences of not being that way to yourself forever. In your head you will know that it’s a huge step that you will have to think about constantly, and I completely understand that. It takes me 10 minutes to speak up in class because I think that I’ll sound stupid. It takes me 11 minutes to go to the kitchen and make Maggi because I think I’ll not make it well. It takes me 12 minutes to decide on a place to go with a friend because I think they will not like it. It takes me an entire lifetime of sorts to get myself to at least say “thank you” to a compliment, without bursting into laughter or changing the topic rapidly.

It takes time, but it does happen. There will be days when someone will show you the mirror, and FORCE you to see the good that you’ve done, and you will have a little hop in your jump the next time you walk down the road. There will be times when you will yourself feel like you have so much to be grateful for, and you will end up thanking your parents, your friends, and yourself for taking all the decisions that you did. There will always be the bad, but that will always be followed by the good. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but some day for sure. Hope is something we try and instil in other people, but for me it is time that I start looking within and fill in the little cracks in my heart that people have left behind. They get magnified by my inner critic, and it’s time for her to take a back seat and relax, so that I can frolic around however I want to.

Be nice to yourself. It is a very difficult thing for a few of us, but as long as we’re together, we will figure it out. x

People Are Walking Stories.

It’s been a really long time since I wrote anything down. Maybe life is too fast to catch up with, or maybe I am still getting a hang of it. Whatever it may be, I know that I am not alone, because, whether you are 12 or 31, there will always be a 0.01% chance that the plans that you have in your mind are not going to work out very well for you.

Recently, I’ve changed cities. I was living in New Delhi for the past 3 years, and now I am in another metropolitan city, Mumbai. Fast or not, things are always a little out of your control when you’re thrown into a new city, with new faces, new languages, and even new food. It takes a while for you to adjust to the vaguely familiar yet drastically different culture that a new city has to offer. I didn’t have a lot of time to mentally prep myself that I have to take up the responsibility of living my own life away from my parents, my home, my friends, and make sure I make the absolute best of what I will be served with. Fortunately, after completing one entire week here in Mumbai, I have discovered that everyone’s in the same boat as me, one way or another.

I have met people who have studied engineering and are now in my counselling psychology class. I have met people who are 32 and working and who realised that what they know about the World is not enough, so maybe they need to study a little more. I have met students who couldn’t understand the grammar or phonetics of English which is the only teaching medium here in the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai, when they first entered its campus, but have now graduated with their dignity, self-respect and pride intact.

Every person walking next to you is a story. They may not “look” like they are sad, but maybe they just lost a loved one. They may not “show” that they’ve had a tough childhood, but maybe they don’t have a mother to go back home to. They may not “feel” like they need help, but maybe there is a reason as to why they only wear full sleeve shirts. There is so much that a face just doesn’t tell you about a person. Depressed or not, orphaned or not, alcoholic or not, abused or not, it isn’t your place to build first impressions over something as superficial as clothes. They have a story to tell, and I bet it is nowhere close to the kind of story you have already thought of. At every stage of life, you will face struggles. Some have them early, and some have them when they think it’s finally time to settle down. Always remember to wait and ask about a person’s life, before assuming the worst. It’s how you would want to be treated, right? Because if you harm yourself every night, and people keep saying that you’re “anti-social” or a “prude”, you won’t feel very good about it.

Every person is scarred. One way or another.

Respect that.

Why can’t two people in love be together?

More often than not, our relationships come to an end. Yes, in this case I am not referring to friend-zones or platonic relationships, but to the romantic ones. As much as I would love to believe that there is someone out there for me, right now, that seems like an unrealistic expectation.

This break-up hasn’t left made me pessimistic, but cautious. It hasn’t made me fall out of love with the concept of romance, but has merely opened my eyes to the dangers of losing my own self for the happiness of someone else. I was a hopeless romantic, who believed in happy endings and settling down after a couple of years, but not anymore. Now I understand the extent to which I can stretch myself thin to be what the other person wants me to be, and it’s beyond realistic. I have seen myself break my soul down to fix someone else’s shattered heart. I have cried and fought for a love that was never mine to begin with. I have lost, and still tried to hold on to an illusion that maybe things will get better.

The truth is, some things just aren’t meant to be. Some friendships wither away, some people can never be good parents, some children are unconventional, and some partners do not stay. To live in a fantasy where you believe that going 3 days in a row without fighting with your boyfriend/girlfriend is an amazing sign of your relationship, is tricky, and toxic. I held on to little things: letters, photographs and memories of a good date, to convince myself that all my insecurities and worries are just in my head, and not ingrained within my partner. I hurt myself by staying with her for far too long, even though I knew that I was going to cry myself to sleep 3 nights a week. It did not work out the way my mind had imagined it, but I still chose to stop and wait; wait for a sign that it was worth it.

Nothing should ever be worth more than your own life. Nobody should ever have the power to bring you down, and then pick you back up like nothing ever happened. If you feel suffocated, LEAVE. If you don’t feel like trying, LEAVE. If you are not happy, LEAVE. If you just can NOT stay, LEAVE. It took me a great amount of time and effort to thank my ex for taking a decision that I know I never could have. Even though things have gotten worse for us after splitting, and I am hurting, it is not as bad as the torture I used to induce upon my own self, just because I was scared of letting go, and I was scared of not being loved anymore.

I loved my ex, for what it is worth. Our lives are independent of each other now, and I tell myself everyday that that is how it is going to be. I was not able to see the harm I had done to my self-image, self-esteem and self-respect, because I was standing behind a smokescreen, trying to look for a glimmer of hope through a dark tunnel of misconceptions. I have learned a lot, both during and after the relationship got over. There are so, so many things that I have to work on, and so many things that I have to fix. The damage that has been done may never be repaired, but I can at least now confidently give time to my own self, instead of cutting myself apart for other people who just couldn’t care less about my existence.

Love is a beautiful thing. You will love a lot of people in your life, but will not stay together with many of them. Doesn’t mean you give up on it, because it is a huge World after all. The struggles that you are going through right now may resonate with someone else a few years down the lane, and you will know that there is something there to pursue. And if you find that you have hit a dead-end, breathe and let go. You know you loved them, and you know you tried. That is all that matters.

P.S.: A word of caution: please don’t make that person your Universe. I know we love being mushy, but functioning as a small, timid planet orbiting around a glorious, sexy star is not the ideal prototype of a healthy relationship. Even if you want to love them to the moon and back, make sure you first have enough love to appreciate yourself. Rest will fall in place.

To The Best Friend I Couldn’t Love.

I am sorry.

I have had my brush with unrequited love, and it was the most unwarranted torture that I could inflict on myself. To love someone who doesn’t love you back is not romantic; it’s tragic. To sleep every night wondering what would be in a parallel universe with you and me is not a fantasy; it’s an illusion. To love me, your best friend since 8th grade who has seen you cry watching Finding Nemo, with a pure heart and a clean conscience, knowing that I cannot give back even a fraction of what you give me, is not beautiful; it’s painful.

I don’t know how excruciatingly hard it must be for you, to talk to me like the friend you were 7 years ago. I don’t know how much it hurts you when I tell you I love you, as a friend who has been with you all these years, and not as someone who is also in love with you. I don’t know how you will yourself to get through another day, knowing that I am not yours. I don’t know, and I still ask you to stay. I still ask you to be with me. I still ask you to go out and meet new people. I still ask you to treat yourself well, when the truth is, I have never once asked: “Are you okay?”.

Well, today, I ask you. I know the answer is going to be “Yes”. It always is, because you never stopped loving me. You never tell me that my photographs make your stomach churn and your eyes moist, but that I am the most beautiful girl you have ever seen. You never tell me to let you be, but ask me how my day was. You never take offence if I don’t text back in a jiffy, but always wish me goodnight. You’ve never stopped, and I know you never will. But you have to. You have to let me go. You have to love yourself more than me.

I wish I could turn back time, to the good old days. I know the best relationships often are launched from the most comfortable friendships, but ours is not a simple relationship. We have struggled through a lot, to get to where we are right now. And neither of us know what our next step should be. Should we stop talking? Should we be friends? Will we be happy? Is this fair on you?

Will we ever really know?

Our Instant Need.

“I don’t want to look at my phone anymore.”

My thoughts every time I wait for a text, staring at the screen, analysing how much time the person on the other end takes to respond after being online for almost half an hour. They’d never know that I am sitting with such thoughts in my mind, because who wants to sound like such a nag?

Is my worth in somebody’s life equivalent to the time lapse between a text sent by me and their response? Is my importance gauged by how many photographs my partner has put up with me on Facebook for the (Virtual) World to see? Is my amicability measured by the number of people who text me every day? Insanely enough, yes. That is what I think these days, because that is all people seem to care about.

As much as I am grateful for the technological advancements we have made as a species, I am also afraid of all the pitfalls they bring with them. One thing that I’ve learned the hard way is that, with instant communication comes instant need. The need to always stay in touch, or the need to know what is happening in another person’s life, or the need to solve arguments in the absence of the person. What happens when your need gets thwarted? You feel like you don’t belong, that people are too busy for you. This “need to be needed” is an epidemic which does not have a cure.

For me, a text message is not just a message communicated via a medium of technology. It has become a life-or-death scenario. “Why is she not replying?”, “Who is she talking to?”, “Why does this always happen?”, “Should I talk about my insecurities?”, “Do I sound like a drag?”. As if matching up to the physical, emotional and psychological demands of the society were not enough, now I have virtual expectation of myself, and others.

If you know what I am talking about, I am sure you would be as afraid as I am about losing your mental peace over this. To some it may seem like an individual problem, but believe me, it’s not. I know people myself who constantly worry about not getting messages or getting responses too late. It’s not a mental illness. It’s just a dangerous trap laid by us, and we have to learn to tip-toe around it without hurting ourselves.

Coincidentally, as I write this, I am waiting for a text myself. I feel myself letting my energy get sucked out by, what? A text that isn’t even real? I know the aim of advancing technology is to make things more accessible and easier for us, but I am an old school girl who would prefer letters or flowers or something tangible to be a part of my reality. I don’t want long, tedious texts of apology that don’t even mean anything; I want to feel your remorse. I don’t want promises of video calls or FaceTime to get me through my day; I want surprise visits. I don’t want love to be uploaded on Instagram with meaningless hashtags; I want you to feel the moment with me.

It may seem like I am an anti-technology person, but I am not. I am typing on a laptop. I use a phone everyday. I surf the Internet. I am a habituated user of technology. Dissing technology is not my aim. My aim is for you to stay connected not only to the outside World, but to your own feelings and senses. I would always love the sight of old letters, coloured with the past. I would always be in love with the “lost art” of making conversations. I would always prefer meeting a new group of people than uploading photographs on Snapchat of the dinner I just finished.

You are your own responsibility.

Your happiness is your own responsibility.

The honest truth is that if you were important enough, people would make time for you.

Live for yourself. Learn to take in the moment, instead of losing its beauty by trying to capture it.

 

 

The World’s Not OK.

When I was 7 years old, I was never asked what clothes I preferred to wear or what toys I liked to play with. I was a girl, chubby and alive, and what are girls supposed to wear? Pink frocks. What games are girls supposed to play? House-house and Princess games.

When I was 13 years old, I was never asked if I liked being around boys in school. Of course, it was the time when girls were expected to giggle and shy away every time a boy looked her way in the corridor. It was the time when my personal space was invaded time and again by proposals from hormonal 15-year-old boys who were as thorough with the understanding of the word “relationship” than I was with something like, say, the Higgs Boson.

Now that I am 19 years old, my past seems like a blur. The happy memories aren’t too hard to retrieve, but it’s the dark ones that make me cringe. Now that I am a free-thinker (or at least I try to be), I’ve come to terms with the fact that I was brought up in an environment as prejudiced and offensive as the RSS or the Nazis, if not more.

I never paid attention to the vocabulary that my parents or my friends used when they had to abuse. I never understood the significant damage a word like “pansy” or “lame” could do to a person, until I was the one under fire. I never realised how awfully my acquaintances went against all human rights grounds when they labeled people as “Biharis” or “faggots” or “retarded”. The day I appraised this offensive conundrum thriving in my life, I felt that I didn’t belong.

You never know how or when you would end up hurting people. Whether it is something you say to a friend on your way to college or something you share on any social networking site, somebody out of the 7 billion of us will take offence, and that is how it is always going to be. Valid offence is a legit concern; radical arguments with no head or tail are not worth your time. For me, as a child, to hear my parents casually remark, “He’s such a pansy”, without any remorse or indignation, is a sign of how I could never model them. I love them, sure, but I would never want to be like them. I would never want to instil in my child, or anybody around me for that matter, to hate a particular “kind” of people because of your lack of knowledge and sensitivity. I would never want to put heterosexuals, able people, mentally gifted children or millionaires on a pedestal higher than that of homosexuals, handicapped people, mentally challenged children or the poorest of the poor.

When people tell you that it’s okay to make jokes of rape, tell them it’s not. When people tell you it’s okay to call someone “gay” for being flamboyant or fashionable, tell them it’s not. When people tell you it’s okay to body shame girls with small breasts, tell it’s not. When people tell you it’s okay to make fun of the aloof kid in science class, tell them it’s not. When people tell you it’s okay to publicly embarrass a woman by calling her a slut, it’s not. When people tell you it’s okay to say that lesbians are alright because lesbian sex is hot, tell them it’s not. When people tell you that it’s okay to listen to your parents offend every friend you have or even their own child, tell them it’s not.

It’s not okay to be okay with something that is not okay.

It’s not okay to run away from parents if you don’t agree with them, but it’s okay if you don’t want to be them.

It’s not okay to doubt your own self-worth because of what the boy next door has to say about your breasts, but it’s okay to buy the best damn lingerie for your OWN body and feel beautiful.

It’s not okay to discriminate, both with or without cause, against people who are unique, but it’s okay to educate yourself.

The World’s not going to be okay.

But you’ll still have to survive.

Last Seen: Alive but Guilt-Ridden

May. It has been six months since I last wrote something, all thanks to my procrastination. I can’t believe the level of laziness I feel these days, escalated further because exams are on my head. So, obviously, I would look for silly excuses to sit down and study at 5:30 p.m. and not 5:15 p.m. because, well, that is how a couch potato’s mind works.

In the past two months, I’ve lost three people in my life. A friend, a grandmother, and a relative. People find out, and they ask me if I’m alright. I say yes, they say okay, and then they ‘advise’ me to be strong. Strong for my Mom, who lost her own mother. Strong for my friend’s family, who lost their son. Strong for my Aunt, who lost her husband. And strong for my little cousin brother, who lost his Dad. I say I will. But I don’t know how long.

Coping with the loss of a loved one is a gradual and difficult process. And you’d be surprised to see how things fall into place faster than you would have imagined, once all the funeral proceedings are done and over with. Do I blame somebody for that? Obviously not. Why would I? Our lives are at a point in time where everything happens in the blink of an eye, literally. You order food instantly, text someone you love them instantly, fill up your college applications online instantly, and, hence, try and lead your normal life after a tragedy instantly. Because it’s true: Time and tide wait for none. Before you know it, your exams are right around the corner, your boss wants you to get back to work otherwise your leave of absence will turn into leave without pay, your children who are too young to fathom what is happening  around them need your attention, your maids are bailing on you because you’re not home to direct them. God. So many aspects of one single life that you don’t get time to cope. You don’t get time to heal. You don’t get time to…be.

Same is the case with me. Deaths happened one after the other. I ran around from house to house one after the other. But when I finally came back home with the intention to take out time for myself, Life said: “You have a lot of work to do, young lady.” So that’s what I’ve been doing. Working, studying, sleeping, writing. Doing whatever I can because of the time crunch, which is, more or less, preventing me to sit down and process whatever has happened. I haven’t mourned their deaths. I didn’t have time to mourn their deaths. Yes, once in a while, when I was alone and thought about it, I woke up to a small wet patch on my pillow. But that’s just about all the mourning I’ve done. And that’s okay. I prefer internally mourning about the things or people I’ve lost rather than putting up harried Facebook statuses or sending out broadcast messages that I am a mess. But do you know what all this has taught me? That life is too short to hold on to those things you’ve always wanted to say or do. That, if you don’t let those words out of your mouth before it’s too late, you will have to hold your silence forever. That there is a lot of time to live life, but very little time to live it without regret. So make sure you count every day that you wake up as a blessing, and, no matter how big a lazy bum you are, call or text or WhatsApp or Skype with someone to tell them how much they mean to you. Time is of the essence. Maybe not for submitting your assignments, but definitely for feeling a little better about yourself.

Sacrifice v/s Compromise. Who won?

It has been a while since I last wrote, majorly because I recently underwent a tonsillectomy. The operation wasn’t painful, since I was obviously knocked unconscious, but the moment the anesthesia wore off, I felt like I was lying on a bed of nails. It was my tonsils that were operated upon but my entire body went through a lot of trauma. And for the initial few days, my mind did too. It wandered off to the strangest of places and made me think about the most trivial things in life which ultimately end up having a huge impact on us. The tussle between sacrifice and compromise was one of them.

Again, starting with the dictionary meanings. Compromise refers to “a settlement of differences in which each side makes concessions”, whereas, sacrifice refers to “the act of giving up something highly valued for the sake of something else considered to have a greater value and/or claim”. In other words, if you want an ice-cream, and your parents offer you waffles instead, you eating those waffles is compromise. On the other hand, if you say “no” to the waffles because you believe that later on you’ll probably get a big chocolate brick to hog on, you have successfully sacrificed your sweet little ice-cream cone. In life we compromise on an almost daily basis without even realising it. Buying a washing powder that is cheaper because the other one isn’t available is compromise, believe it or not. Compromising on your health by not taking your medicines on time or compromising on your relationship with your parents by running off to attend a cool party are things that we’ve all done. Sacrifice? That is the bigger fish that not everybody can fry. But they should.

You think compromise is better, because it looks like you’re protecting your interest and also getting something somewhat close enough to your expectations. But that is the easy way out. If you look at it from an objective view, you’ll realise only one thing: You end up settling for less. You date somebody because they look good, even though they treat you like trash? That is you settling for less by compromising on your happiness. You work 9 to 5 for a job you don’t even like? That is you compromising on your career. You lower your expectations from your friend because she/he didn’t reply back to your text or didn’t call up? That is you compromising on your quality of life. Too many compromises in life and you become used to not getting what you think you deserve. Sacrifice, on the other hand, is the act of giving something up for the bigger picture. It is a very vague concept indeed, because you never know what life has in store for you. You wouldn’t want to sacrifice your job by quitting till you don’t have another one in your hand, right? That is pretty understandable. That is what all of us think about. And sacrificing something is easier said than done. Letting go of your friend or partner or job or home is a difficult thing to do, but it also becomes necessary when, at the end of the day, you are frustrated or annoyed or don’t like what you’re doing. That is when you have to choose: “Do I continue beating myself down or do I ax the reason for my unhappiness out of my life?”.

Compromise on a small scale is acceptable and also inevitable. If you want to watch your favourite movie in the theatre and you don’t get the balcony seat tickets, you’ll still watch it anyway. But compromising on the ideas of love and happiness and professionalism isn’t going to do you a lot of good. They say you have to fight to achieve what you deserve, and you can’t fight without giving some things up in the process. Celebrities and successful businessmen and artists and musicians and writers and bloggers and YouTubers and basically everyone speaks of how they had to give up something or the other in order to reach where they are today. Then what is stopping you? Don’t let compromise rule your mind and win. Put it on a leash. Control your mind so that it doesn’t get used to the idea of settling for something less in value. And sometimes, put your needs and expectations before that of others. Sacrifice on your relationship or job or money in order to finally be liberated enough to stand on your own two feet. 🙂

All Your Perfect Imperfections.

Love. Love, I believe, is the biggest mystery mankind has faced. They say when you love somebody, everything around you seems alright. What love means to one person may not mean the same to the other. It is completely subjective, and it is as real as we are. And still, beyond all the butterflies in your stomach and the thumping of your heart, you have to give it a really good amount of time to mature into something worthwhile. If you plant a new sapling in your backyard, you don’t just water it and leave it to grow into a beautiful plant. You also have to understand the conditions in which it can flourish.

You believe your partner is your ‘better half’, right? Well, then that better half would be fairly acquainted with your shortcomings, as well as his/her own. And if they aren’t then you have to make them. And you also have to make sure that you know the little flaws about them that make them who they are. Not always being on time, getting emotional, asking a hundred questions are a few of the many things that people in love slowly realise aren’t the best thing in their partner. And they still choose to love them. No questions asked. Because nobody is perfect, and there is no model of an ‘ideal relationship’. So, the biggest task that lies in front of a human being is to understand and accept things that the other person can’t do, because they aren’t built for it. It sounds like an easy task, but it is as tough as building the Eiffel Tower from scratch. And if you aren’t able to do it properly, the foundations of your Love Tower might not be strong enough to stay up for long.

I am too emotional. I overanalyze situations and I think of the worst case scenarios in the blink of an eye. I cry, even more so when I watch a mushy movie or listen to a song that reminds me of the person I love. But that just makes me who I am. I can’t and I won’t change it for the World. For the person who has to bear with me for the rest of their life, they know these imperfections of mine. And I know they can’t divide their attention between a lot of things, that they take time to open up and talk about their issues. And that has only made us stronger. Yes, it took time, because explaining how the brain and heart work is a really tough job. It’s like explaining English in Hindi. But we have to teach that lesson whenever it’s necessary, and also give the other person enough space and trust in us to share their insecurities and imperfections with us. The notion that nobody is perfect is one we have to imbibe. If we compliment each other’s flaws, it really doesn’t get any more beautiful than that, does it? ❤