Dear Me
You give yourself a lot less credit than you deserve.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and you have just cooked yourself a simple meal of a khichdi, comfort food as they call it. After having kept the plate in the sink, as you move to the next task of drying the washed clothes, a sudden sadness hits you. It’s no fun. It’s no fun cooking for yourself. Cleaning for yourself. Watching Netflix by yourself. All alone by yourself. It is in these moments of emptiness you realize what perhaps a midlife crisis is. Or you suppose it must be.
It takes just one thought like this for an existential crisis to creep up and make you completely give up everything in your good life and some moments like these may turn someone into an addict and perhaps also homeless. And as you acknowledge this thought, you recall all those similar and exact same situations where you took that three seconds of courage to look past this shadow of gloominess and kept pushing forward. And hence, you decided to celebrate this Sunday as the self-love Sunday, remembering all the time you were on the edge of giving up and yet decided to turn away and run towards the other side. So, this Sunday, I want to remind you how far you have come from those body shamers, cat-callers, your own guilt trips, and that you really give yourself a lot less credit than you deserve.
So, let’s take a walk down the self-love lane, shall we?
I want to tell you that you should be proud of not listening to any of those aunties who told you that you aren’t beautiful because of your skin color because your lips are too thick and skin to scarry.
I want to remind you of how you made it alone from all those heart-shattering break-ups, the shame and the ill-treatment those men brought you and that you took the bullet more number of times you could and yet you still love today. You did not let your heart gates close and your faith die a silent death in suffocation but you still made new friends, gave yourself and others a second chance even if it was slow. Even if it took you two years. I am proud of you because you learned to forgive them but most importantly you are learning to forgive yourself.
I am filled with pride and love and wholesomeness when I see you grow as you take this step to heal your relationships with your parents even though they have not been their best in some recent years as they coerced you into giving yourself up, just so you could have the tag of a married woman. I am proud that you chose to see them as only people who are learning through life as you are and not as the know-it-all perfect elders. Because that is not true, that is not real. I am so so glad, deep in my heart, that you did not take their words as your worth and stood your ground, but more importantly how you came back now to hold their hand as they feel tired due to old age. You help them learn your way and unlearn the traditional societal norms. I am most content that you did this. This one especially with parents as they heal, you heal.
I am happy that you are now making efforts not to judge people on the illusioned ideas of how they should behave but rather loving them how they should be loved. You are accepting them how they are not how you think they should be.
And finally, I am so glad that today when this thought came to your mind, you acknowledged, heard, and understood it. And you went another mile and detached yourself from the emotion to turn it around into self-love. To write about it. For life is nothing but a total sum of your thoughts and non-thoughts.
For I am telling you to give yourself a lot more credit than you do for all that you are. Because you, my dear, are perfect.
