As I write this piece, sad music plays inside my head. The music signifies hopes quashed, wishes unfulfilled, dreams broken, people dead, and days spent dreaming. Terrible parallelism aside, I cannot help myself being sad. And it's primarily because of the sad feelings inside me.
In my short life on earth, I have found dreams to be comforting, imaginative, escapist, and innovative. They have carried me through happy days and dull days. Ideas that I dreamt of and sketched on paper, then implemented have been such a rush. It was great to see my dreams come true in the past.
Now though, dreams hardly ever make sense. The depressing thoughts and dreams that come to me reek of despair and hopelessness. Why such a twist in the tale? Where have the happy thoughts gone? Can I get myself out of this rut?
I don't know the answers. I feel sadder when I see people around me realising the very dreams that I had.... And I have to say "had" because I cannot "have" them anymore. Life has become too hopeless to dream of any joy. Even the funniest of jokes seem bland. There is no taste in life anymore. Short of being suicidal, I have lost all hope. Abandon ship.
I wanted to go to fashion school and design clothes. Sure, my dad convinced me that he couldn't pay for fashion school and that I should take up some other course instead. Ironically, he wanted my brother and me to become doctors or engineers. How was he going to support our education then? Or our MBA degrees after getting our B.Tech?
If I could go back in time, I would tell my younger self to never listen to her father. He doesn't know what's best. He didn't have a career to dish out career advise to others. He doesn't know that broken dreams have a huge impact on a person. It may even put them in depression.
I am half a woman now. I know how to handle people, money, ugly situations, political discussions, and perverts. But I have not achieved my full potential in life. I have failed but I have not failed at things that I felt passionately about. I didn't pursue journalism, fashion school, filmmaking, nor full-time travel. On a good day, I dream that I will fulfill one of those dreams. But I am convinced that I won't be able to do it under this roof. As long as I am with my family, my dad will squeeze out every penny that I earn. And I can only dream of getting an inheritance from him. With his messed up family relations and financial insecurity, David and I are better off living off the land. We know that we will never get anything from him. Respect, love, not admiration. The people that we have become is solely because we tried not to be like him. We knew that being like him meant being a failure in life. That is not a respectable thing to be.
I will make my own destiny one day. I will follow my dreams and either fail at it or succeed. It's either of those but I know that I will be happy regardless of the result. For only when I have tried will I know the full potential of me. Until then, I am half a picture--incomplete and not even a quarter of its worth. The education and life experience that I've had will be wasted if I don't pursue my dreams. As half a woman, I promise to never let that happen. Ever.
