The objective of this article is straightforward. I read on WikiHow that in order to move on and start afresh, I will have to endure the pain of recollecting my past closely first. It is a cakewalk for me because lately, I have been paying many visits to my past. It is excruciating, though as I am already beginning to feel it. But the pit inside my stomach feels filled as we speak. Letting go is a good practice. Closure is necessary.
I am going to talk about four males who ruined my life. That's to say, these are the chronicles of how and why I allowed these people to damage me like they did. I have over-analyzed my problems and dwelled on my past and cried over all of it. But I have never, until today, ventured into the past in its entirety. Because until now, I was being a masochist and today, I am looking for being salvaged. I will not falsify the facts and I will not try to procrastinate further. This is what happens when shit hits the fan and we're done for. It's either this or suicide, as far as I am concerned.
#1 My Father, Gautam Raiprakash
He likes his swagger. His ego is the size of China's population. And he was the first man to have hurt me ever. You see, there's something to be said about men who think they run this and every other place. And it is that they suck! My father is not a bad man. He is just typical. There's only one point of view in this world that he fully understands, his own. And if you must know why I say he's ruined my life and that in fact, he's the pioneer here, here goes nothing.
My father came into my life when I was born. When I was a bit older, he only came into my life on Sundays. I was a kid and my father was a busy man. He liked his grandeur so I assumed we were rich. Because we hardly ever met, I assumed under the influence of a lot of Hindi movies, he was working his arse off for us. That's when my affinity for pretending to be a bad girl emerged. You know what it was like in the early 2000s with all the heroines, right? They were rich and rude and spoiled. So, even though I and Daddy Dearest couldn't care less to be a part of each other's lives, I was his spoilt brat.
I became a teenager and acted like one when I was ten. I was given an internet connection and I fabricated a world there. I used to bang the door to my mother's face and stay locked up in my room and thought my friends were immature idiots. That was a cry for help. But I wasn't, well, helped. I had a lifestyle of my own by the time I was twelve. Even though I had become a teenager before I was supposed to, my bubble was bubbly as ever and I lived inside it just as much as I did inside my room all day. I was still rich Daddy's spoiled daughter until one night I wasn't. From that point onwards, I was an irresponsible man's daughter. I was the daughter of a man who abused his family under the effects of alcohol. I was the daughter of a man who had lost all his money and had left a pile of mistakes in his wake. Somehow, this man still had the cheek to tell me that such episodes' happen every day in some families.
While they did not happen every day and that I was not helping matters much myself, they happened frequently. I did not want to be anybody's daughter and especially his. I didn't want to ever see him again. I didn't have to try hard in that case because well, he was still working, wasn't he? But the fact was that there were more such episodes. The man had become unreasonable, hopeless and a menace.
That was four years ago. And I will be unfair and downright thankless to say that he has not changed. But I don't dote on him anymore. I don't like to talk to him. I haven't forgiven him. And I'm trying to forgive him here. Because he took more than just my innocence away from me by showing me how brutal he, my caregiver could get. He also took away, it seems irrevocably so, my ability to trust another man. It's true as I grew I realized I could love and that I was an intense creature but all my feelings stand on a foundation today that lacks trust. The roots should be trust and there, I have jack squat. And even though I have been rash and unruly and unreasonable myself, this one is on my father.
#2 My Almost Cyber-Boyfriend, Shivam
Remember how I thought my friends were immature idiots? And that I had a world of my own in cyberspace? Yeah. There, I also had a friend who I assumed, at the age of twelve, I loved. He was five years my senior and I could not go a day without speaking to him. My family was at its shitty best and my friends, I take it, were a bit immature. They were never idiots and I was always one. I know that today. But this guy had always just the things to say which a desperate, vulnerable and confused little girl would want to hear.
He said I mattered to him, told me I was his best friend. He told me I meant most of the world to him. So, I overlooked the fact that it was his girlfriend who had made us befriend each other. I overlooked that I had already begun to develop trust issues and went with it. So, while I should have been enjoying watching cartoons or at least teen sitcoms but not understanding most of the content, I was waiting for him to show up online at 9:30 sharp every night.
I believed I would die if I did not get to speak to him. You know what? I could have. Because whenever we did not speak, I cut myself. Self-mutilation for a boy at 12, that's real healthy, isn't it? Eventually I realize that the cutting is a cry for help, a measure to seek attention, asking for help. I didn't want to die just yet. I confess, sometimes I did because nothing ever worked out. My house was a battleground, my school friends' lives' biggest problems were losing ONE WHOLE mark on a test and there he was, saying all the right things but in a relationship with another. That was when I developed my need to be taken care of. He took care of me. He gave a shit. When I actually grew up, I realized nobody gives any shit for anyone, including myself. But the twelve year old me did not need anybody or anything more than that fellow.
Nobody gets any cookies for figuring out that he was no one. They were all lies and he did not even exist. Somebody was fooling me. And boy was I fooled! I picked up my lesson there. And the first year into my numerical teenage was a personal horror. This person intensified my yearning for protection and shelter. What he did to me showed me what people were capable of doing. So, I put on my guard and cemented it. So, when anyone should try to penetrate it, they would just be pushed flat on their butts. But isn't it funny? It made me brittle. The cement wall could still be hammered and broken to pieces.
#3 My First Love, Swayum Shikhawat
I was fourteen. I had known he existed since I was three. But he entered my life when we were put in the same section in ninth standard. He hadn't properly entered my life until ninth standard was almost over. My bitch mode was permanent in those days. I intimidated him. The walls around me did not see danger in him. But the eye of my mind really, it had started to observe. He wasn't your regular fourteen year old. He was twice as smart and thrice as witty. His face reminds me of a shriveled prune and he looks eternally malnourished. But he's the most charming person, man, woman or child that I have ever set eyes on.
I decided it was no harm trying to get to know him. And I managed to make friends with him too. But when I did, I realized that everyone was his friend. And by that time, I had developed enough feelings to wish that I stood out even if just a little bit. But I didn't. The interesting point here is to not forget that I had still not fallen in love. I could pretend to be as stoical as ever.
I cannot put a finger on any specific day. But I had fallen for him. I had fallen for every single thing about him that I earlier was critical of. And I started to know him for real. I started remembering the things he said, I started looking at him through my friend's hair. I started to love him for being modest and sensitive and surprising. I started to love his ridiculous sense of humor. I started to love that he knew I did not want to be treated like the other girls. By the time we started eleventh standard, I was smitten and ecstatic about it. I had come to see his flaws and I had come to understand his personality. I was hanging on to every word he said and doing everything in my might for one other glance at him before I went home. Even to this day, he exerts the same power over me.
He's a good boy. He knows me. And I love him. In spite of being his exact opposite, I love him. Blood and gore excite me and he fears syringes. Math destroyed me even before my father did and he's a frigging Math Genius. I am impulsive and wild and violent and he is just as patient and calm. I am intense and people bother me. I worry for them and I love them and I hurt myself in the procedure. And he values himself. He loves himself in a healthy way and is happy because he knows his worth and has it realized. He's neutral and I am extreme. Also, he's still there and I am away. So, even though my insides believe that he will never hurt me, he's hurting me. He's the most beautiful person I know. I am in love with him right now and will be for a long while. But he needed to be included in my list of the men who ruined my life because I had come very close to allowing his thoughts and the memories to kill me. That won't happen again. He's my beacon of light, no matter what. But he's a boy, isn't he? And by now, you must have understood what his kind does to me.
My last words on his matter: I am hopelessly and absolutely in love here. But I'm not going to let it break me.
#4 My Best Friend, Rey
He's a jerk and I have looked after him since eighth standard. We have discussed Kama sutra in front of that friend of ours who was likely to go in shock of the disgust and never feel normal again. We have advised each other to keep looking for potential partners and promised that if there's no one, the other will turn up. I have caught him every time blushing when his crush came into our class for something and seen him make every possible face he could pull at the teachers. I was his partner in crime a fair few times and I was also his shrink when his poor marks upset him. He did nothing much to make up for the poor marks. You see, he's the best and he knows everything. He has the class and the taste and we're earthlings and wastes of space.
But even so, he is one of the best friends I've ever had. And he's someone I should be thanking for ruining my life. Because had he not, I wouldn't have been writing this article. You see, suddenly I started to miss him the other day and I have cried half my body water outta me ever since. But I spoke to him this morning and felt liberated. I felt as though I could not only let go of him but also of what the first two males on this list did. I felt that I could once and for all be okay about being in love with someone without it being some sort of a life-destroying problem. Why was that? I frigging love this idiot of a boy and even though he was not opening up, he liberated me. He's taken away a lot of my hair, time and heart but through him, I found what I needed today. I needed closure. I needed to know why it is important to let go. And right now, that is exactly what I finished doing.
Sharon Raiprakash
4:17 PM, 11 October 2013
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If the writers had ever attempted to give us a back-story like this, the former version of Sharon could have been explained. Just saying, that her olden self still inspires my writings and has a profound connection with well, me. I hope you liked reading this prose. (:
Epiphany.
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