“This is for your own good.”
“You are not family oriented.”
“You dressed like a bimbo.”
“You should not dress like that.”
Growing up, I listened to millions of these restrictions.
Cover yourself. Wear a veil. Sit properly. Don’t attract attention. Don’t make people look at you.
Blah blah blah.
And somewhere in all of that, I learned something I wish I had never learned.
That if a man looked at me the wrong way, somehow I was partly responsible.
That I should not be the girl who dressed a certain way and invited the wrong kind of attention.
That it was my bad.
That it was unreasonable to expect decency from the other person.
I was just a girl growing up. Learning about my changing body. Developing likes and dislikes. Discovering what made me feel pretty. Admiring certain people. Beginning to notice boys. Beginning to understand attraction.
There is a distinction here.
I wanted to be noticed by some people.
Not by everyone.
Certainly not by much older men whose gazes made my skin crawl.
But I didn't have the language for that distinction.
Instead, I was made to feel like being visible itself was dangerous.
The dresses I wanted to wear on my own body, because I thought they were beautiful, became morally suspicious.
Wanting to wear them became immoral.
Wanting attention became immoral.
Wanting to feel pretty became immoral.
And if I secretly wanted those things, maybe that meant there was something wrong with me.
Maybe I was morally corrupt.
Maybe I was the rebel.
Maybe I was the bad girl.
I thought I was bad.
I thought I was not the norm.
And maybe I was a rebel. I hated rules that seemed to exist simply because I was a girl.
“Hennu hudi aagi adige madakke baralla.”
“You don’t know how to cook!.”
“Your in-laws will put kerosene on you and burn you.”
These things were said so casually.
As though they were just facts of life.
As though this was the inevitable price of being a woman.
Strangely, it didn't make me afraid of cooking.
It made me furious at the idea that cooking was supposed to be my obligation because I was born a woman.
Physical assault was normalized too.
Sometimes it was explained as love.
“He did it because he loves you.”
“This is for your own good.”
And I remember feeling this fire inside me.
This cannot be right.
This cannot possibly be the world.
And yet somehow, I also became complacent.
That is the part I cannot stop thinking about.
Why didn't I go completely berserk?
Why didn't I look at this world and decide that I needed to become absolutely invincible because otherwise it would make me a slave?
What made me so average?
What made me accept so much?
What made me believe that I could somehow live softly inside a world that had already shown me how easily women could be controlled?
And then I let a man manipulate and groom me for ten years.
Ten years.
I don't think he was completely successful in breaking my soul.
Somehow, somewhere inside me, I could still see what was happening.
And eventually, I got out.
But I resent myself for something I don't even know is fair to resent myself for.
I resent myself for not being stronger.
For not being more ruthless about my own life.
For not overcoming all of this and becoming so wildly successful that none of it could ever touch me.
How could I have been complacent?
What made me?
Thirty-eight years of my life sometimes feels like I took one step forward and three steps backward.
And I am exhausted by being my own greatest enemy.
Because I knew.
I knew that as a woman, I needed to be financially capable.
Physically capable.
Mentally capable.
I knew that if I wasn't, I could suffer.
I knew that dependence could become a cage.
And yet I still believed in a man.
In a fairy tale.
In all the other bullshit we are taught to believe will somehow save us.
And now I keep asking myself:
When am I going to make myself so strong that no one can put me in those situations ever again?
When will my mind become so sharp that I cannot be manipulated?
When will my body become so strong that I feel completely at home inside it?
When will I become so knowledgeable that I can see the world clearly enough to protect myself?
When will I become so financially independent that nobody can ever use money as leverage over me?
When will I become untouchable?
And then I look at the world now, and I feel even more confused.
Being a “trad wife” is trending.
Giving up your freedom is being packaged as a lifestyle.
Giving up financial independence is being romanticized.
Giving up agency is being sold to young women as a choice.
And I can't stop wondering about it.
Maybe there really is something deeply human in wanting to be taken care of.
Maybe I am coded that way too.
Maybe there is something beautiful about being loved, adored, protected, and cared for.
Maybe I want that.
Maybe I want someone to take care of me sometimes.
Maybe I want to give someone my love and respect in return.
But does being loved have to come at the cost of freedom?
Does being cared for have to mean surrendering agency?
Why does it have to be one or the other?
Why does the world keep tilting so violently from one extreme to another?
I don't know.
I feel frustrated.
I feel lost.
I feel angry.
And underneath all of it, I feel hurt.
Deeply, deeply hurt.
But there is one thing I know.
I have to win.
Not against men.
Not against women.
Not against the world.
Against the parts of me that keep abandoning myself.
I have to win over my laziness.
Over the days when my body doesn't listen to me.
Over the fog in my head.
Over my lack of discipline.
I have to become knowledgeable.
I have to understand money.
I have to understand people.
I have to understand the world.
I have to understand my own mind.
I have to become physically strong.
Mentally strong.
Financially strong.
I want to become so difficult to manipulate that someone would have to move mountains to control me.
I want to be able to fulfill my dreams.
I want to build something that is mine.
I want to be capable.
I want to be independent.
I want to choose love because I want it, not because I need it to survive.
And if love doesn't stay?
I want to still be able to look at my life and feel proud.
I want to be free.
Maybe that is the thing I am actually searching for.
Not invincibility.
Freedom.
The kind of freedom where love can enter my life without becoming the price of admission.
The kind where being cared for doesn't require me to surrender myself.
The kind where I can wear what I want without carrying someone else's morality on my body.
The kind where I can cook because I want to, not because I am a woman.
The kind where I can be soft without becoming helpless.
The kind where I can be loved without becoming owned.
So maybe I need to take all this pain and do something with it.
I need to turn it into fuel.
I need to build myself so completely that the woman who once thought she had to shrink herself to survive finally has somewhere to go.
I feel like I have been inside a cocoon for a very long time.
And I am so fucking tired of being inside it.
I want out.
I want to burst out of it.
I want to see what I become when I stop apologizing for wanting a life.
And maybe, if I ever get there, I want every woman who crosses my path to know that she doesn't have to choose between being loved and being free either.