Tuesdays with Winni

I've been asking people I know well to come up with ten or more adjectives that describe who they feel I am - an offshoot of an activity from my classes on Personality. Responses have mostly been predictable, consistent and a little indulgent perhaps. But that's not what this post is about. I'm looking for my backbone. I'm sure I was born with one but it began crumbling by the time I was 4 and by the look of things now, it will completely cease to exist by the time I get to 24. Of course, I say this in the metaphorical sense. My body is fine but when it comes to my mind, I think I have doubts and very reasonable ones at that.

My counselor often talks to me of scripts - our conceptions and beliefs about our life and life in general that guide how we perceive and respond to all that happens. A script, from my understanding of what he tells me, is rooted almost completely in one's childhood and once developed, this script remains unchanged and holds the key to all kinds of success. Or failure. My own script is something I haven't really been able to apply much thought to. Maybe I don't want to even as I fear my script translates into the life of two decades bygone and the lifetime to come absolutely and starkly empty. Sounds like a dramatic statement to make, I know and I'm guessing that is the issue with soul-searching in prose - what sounds true to the mind always sounds silly in sight and sunlight.

Talking of the adjectives activity, the ten adjectives my Dad listed out were profoundly positive. Things that sound profoundly positive don't really exist. Think of hope (the paradise for fools), eternity (who has ever seen eternity?), meaning, beauty, perfection and on and on. Similarly, my Dad's profoundly positive perception of me doesn't really exist. It may exist in parts, in masks, in habits and simply because in my life so far, I've had no way to walk but for his way. Stepping out of his way incurs immense wrath and I'm not one for facing conflict. I'd rather bend my head than bare my mind. And I like peace, at almost any price. The problems arise because I don't like his way. And I'm beginning to become pretty certain that he wouldn't like me any other way. The daughter he loves doesn't completely exist. I fear the day he faces more than the usual amount of disagreement from me, he'd disown me in his rather verbal and noisy fashion.

My Dad and me. We never went the close-and-later-grew-apart way. Instead it took me 18 years to freely even get down to speaking to him. Today he proudly talks of how we're akin to friends, we eat out together, shop together, rant together. In a way childhood with my Dad's just begun for me. He's never raised his hand against me, never denied me of something he could provide, given me the options that were inconceivable in his life. He trusts me implicitly. All of those count to me beyond measure but things that aren't as simple as agreeing on a shopping list or a place to eat exist. There's talk of curbs when there should be freedom, there will in the future be talk of marriage that him and me won't see eye to eye on surely and there will obviously, be a decline in obedience - the most worthy aspect of me in his eyes. It will hurt him. I don't want to inflict this rude awakening sort of situation upon him and knowing my sub-zero levels of guts, this may never happen but things have been wrong a long way, awareness must come in no matter how late in his life (and mine) and consequences have to be borne.

For now, I'm still doing this stretching between what he wants and what I want. And it's starting to hurt. It's taking a toll on me that might's always right in the place I call home. It's taking a toll on me that the freedom he wants to give me involves letting me drive a car, stand up to the demands that are made of me and always be able to see his perspective but I'm worried that the freedom to seek my life and speak for myself will probably never be mine. That's too big a price to pay for peace and too small a price to reclaim a backbone that will last this time around. This tug and shove situation, the hopes, the disappointments and the absolute disillusionment are getting me down in a big way. Sometimes, everything I've done so far - all the experiences, learning, joy, pain seem null and void because I feel as though I'm nobody, as though I've no say, no way and just no worth.

Feelings like that don't knock before they come. They just come. And I'm yet to regain equilibrium from things that have happened, from days that I have seen and there are things that happen day in and day out that don't really help one move ahead. It isn't as though I'm trying to say others have it easy. I know people dealing with harsher realities and doing it exceedingly well. I'm coming to terms with the fact that maybe I don't hold up as well. I know it takes me time, I know it's never complete, I know that somewhere I'm still not as easy with things as I'd like to be. Obviously, I'm looking for a way out of this, I'm on the way and it's taken me to some breathtaking moments, some wonderful people and little steps of building faith that I need so bad.

At each point of my life when I was drowning, I've been very lucky to have people who've seen the best in me, who've shook me and deafened me till I heard and believed in the things they valued in me. A lot of people have held up the me without the backbone and I really do think it has translated into some of the backbone you see in me today. And in the smile that I sport ever so often. I wish others were as lucky. I wish luck could be shared because acceptance can feel truly wonderful, especially when I know that I come as a complete package of rent-free accommodation to fears, a bland sense of reality that can ruin all fun and shell that I'm trying to whittle away very hard for very long. I can be a difficult person and so for everyone who put up with all that and eventually learnt to love me despite the dark, I owe you a lot more than the biggest thank you.

PS: A lot of really good and really bad things happened in the year that went by. One of the really good things are the sessions with my counselor. Tuesday evenings have been redefined and we start sessions from next tuesday after a month's break. We would've had one today but he isn't keeping well. Get well soon, Winni and a big thank you.