Words Of Desideratum
"Expectations wouldn't hurt anymore. Judgments won't pierce through your heart. Accusations won't scratch your soul. Responsibilities won't suffocate you any longer - if you decide to be heartless, a little further."
Waking up every morning and seeing myself glow with happiness - pure, genuine, unadulterated happiness, that I never thought would be in my lines of destiny, added up to my strength to face the world head on. To fight them. To fight myself. Because, it's worth it. This happiness, this dream, its all worth the fight. It's worth the retaliation from my own kin; it's worth the rejection from my very personal roots.
If anyone would have asked me to do this, to fight back, to retaliate, to rebel, fifteen years back, I would have laughed it off, I would have... hidden myself behind an added layer of curtain. Now when I look back, I realized what a fool I had been to even try to hide myself, how stupid it was to crush myself at every single step when it wasn't even required. Guess this is what happens when you try to devote yourself completely to people you care about.
I had always thought that that was how it should be. That was how it was supposed to be. Isn't that exactly what we are taught? To obey, to listen, to please, to shine over and above their expectations. And secretly, along the way to die a slow torturous death. Being the apple of eye of everyone only raises the burden. While some try to get away using it as an advantage, some take that as liability to be paid off in kind and some take that as responsibility and decide to suffocate themselves further with it.
Unfortunately, for me, I fell in the last category.
It took 17 years, 17 years of my life for me to learn that I just can not do it. I can not go around being the perfect daughter who sets out to fulfill her parents dream crushing down hers in process. I can not go around being the dotting student who excels in everything she does only to sacrifice on her share of detention and fun. I can not go around being the ideal sister to look up to and loose my chance to commit mistakes and learn from it. And sure as hell, I can not go around being the understanding friend who refuses to let her agony overwhelm her for she has to go and handle her friends and be this person who always comes up with solution to their problems.
In those 17 years I would try, try as hard as I could to please them all, to keep them happy, to rise up to their expectations, to make them proud of me. I wouldn't care how much it hurt me in the process for I had responsibility towards them. But I failed. I failed every single time I disappointed my parents when I tried to hint them towards my own dreams. I failed every time when my teachers chastised me just for the little, in the flow of moment, fun I had. I failed every once as my siblings would shake their heads in disapproval when I faltered in my steps. I failed consistently as my friends would look at me as if I am a horrible monster when I failed to understand their pain for mine wasn't leaving me alone.
But I wouldn't just stop doing all of that. I wouldn't stop putting up efforts to please them. I wouldn't stop crushing down myself further, stepping on my dreams, loosing my chance at being a more learned person, putting up mask after masks to hide my real self, which begged to breath in freedom. I thought that it would all go away, it's just matter of time before I'll get used to it. It was always supposed to be this way, wasn't it?
But I was wrong - utterly, horribly, and hilariously wrong. The pain wouldn't just go. Every time I hid myself behind the curtain, I fell down in this pit of wallow. Every time I added a mask to hide myself, I felt loosing myself under its weight. It won't just go away, the pain, the poisonously gnawing feeling that what I am doing is wrong on all platforms, wouldn't leave me. I tried to make it go away; I tried to shut down that part of myself. I really did.
But I failed. I failed because I broke down.
I broke down, letting go of every single mask I wore, drew away all the curtains to let the light filter in, to let the freedom fill up my lungs and allow me to breath. I let myself be, the weak, pained and vulnerable me in what I thought was a secluded corned in central park but... I was wrong. Again.
There stood a man, looking right through me, as if knowing the actual cause of my disheveled state, the havoc in my life, the hollow in my eyes. Eyes... but his eyes... they showed something akin to sympathy, to pity and I loathed it. I loathed those emotions, I loathed being at receiving ends of them, I loathed being vulnerable and letting others get a better hold of me. I loathed it for I am not weak, I would rather die then let someone see me in this state.
As if he knew what would cause me discomfort, he didn't said much to me except for two to three lines. Mere lines but so powerful, that had the capabilities to set my world upside down. Those were the words that I needed to hear, those were the words that changed me, changed my judgment, changed my priorities.
It all changed after that day, nothing was same as before but what surprised me was the fact that I didn't want it either. I didn't ran behind people anymore to please them be it my parents or my friends. I stopped caring what they thought of me until and unless I was satisfied and my conscience was letting me live in peace. I stopped paying heeds to their accusatory looks that told me nothing but how I've changed and this wasn't supposed to be the way I should live but then, I was beyond caring and I am glad. I am glad that I started listening to my heart from then on for the lack of inhibition did wonders on me. I was freer than before, happier, and more alive.
Today, I am what I could ever dream of, a well established author with forte genre being crime thriller. Adding to it, I am a successful owner of the chain of NGOs, Ran, doing justification to its name, saving the drowning ones.
Even today people see me as someone uncaring, selfish, undeserving, arrogant, egoistic and quite a lot, which I simply take up as compliment. No, not because I follow the policy of Love me or Hate me but you can not ignore me. No, never that. It is because I know I am all of that. I am uncaring about what ever the hell they think about me, that's not my concern but theirs. I am selfish and selfish to an extent when you can say there can be no one worse than me but the catch here is, I am selfish, not for myself, but for the happiness on the faces of those innocent ignorant souls out there. I am undeserving, of course, of the shit out there in the world. Come on, an awesome person like me doesn't deserve it. I am arrogant too, well, now if you will come and try to make hole in my perfectly set life, I won't exactly praise you and gift you my property, now will I?
If anyone asks me whether am I satisfied with my life or not, I'll answer, of course I am. There is nothing more I could have asked for. A profession that I had always craved for, being the reason behind the smile on faces of many, the one kind of bliss that can outshine a thousand times the pain of your life, people around you acknowledging you as human and not some machine who is supposed to be flawless. I don't think I need anything more in my life, being greedy much ain't healthy, you see.
To think, it's all because of those lines. Those lines which made me the person I am, which gave life to my crushed spirit and forced it to dream again, which fueled up the ceased fire within me and made me flame up my surrounding. No matter what, I can not and will not forget those lines.
"You can not make everyone happy always no matter how hard you try. Someone or the other will always get hurt along the process. Just try to keep yourself happy, be a little more selfish, but don't loose reign over your humanity and no one can stop you from ruling your life."
It is exactly as he had said it would be.
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