Arfa T. Chaudhary – Sep 16, 2019
^{Edited by Rabhia Shuja}

I keep this untitled because I am unable to find a proper title for this blog

Sometimes, people come into your life to tell you your worth. They acknowledge you. They love you as you are. And, you start seeing yourself from their eyes. You start shining in a better way. You start working on you. Because you know that there is someone who believes you unbelievably.

But sometimes, it happens that people come into your life to break you, to tell you how worthless you are. They want you to believe that you don’t deserve love, care, and affection. They treat you as an option. Although they have no other option apart from you, you still mean nothing more than a doormat to them. They want to belittle you in front of your own eyes. The question that keeps arising in my head is, why?

Why are they doing it? All I can gather is that they do this because they find you submissive. Your kind heart, love, and care, your understanding and compromising nature, your purity, and honesty, it seems to them like the traits of a weak human. To me, these are the beautiful traits of a strong personality. However, when you’re pushed to believe otherwise, you can’t help but consider your strengths as weaknesses. You start seeing yourself as a useless creature. They want you to be the weakest human so they can dominate you. They give you psychological and emotional pressure. And it can be physical as well.

What baffles me, even more, is that after doing everything according to their wish, you are still worthless. It is because you are not kind to yourself. You are not taking care of your dignity, soul, and your own values. You forget about your values, your dignity. You follow them blindly. Just to gain some social advantages, so you can be acknowledged.

Someone asked me, “If you had to immerse your life into someone else’s life, who would it be?” I have written that I want to be a teenage girl who is ambitious towards her career. She sets goals for herself and follows them with focus and determination. She is blessed with everything, she loves herself the most and she gives herself a priority. What influenced her to be that way? Who told her to be strong in this bubbly age? Why is she not as carefree as I was as a teenager? Being a Pakistani girl, bound by the cultural norms, how was she able to take a stand for herself at this young age?

Suddenly, I realized something. Why was I comparing myself with an unknown person? I can’t imagine the responsibilities she has. I can’t imagine what kind of challenges may arise in her future. She is running in her timeline and I am in mine… 

There is no comparison between me and her!!!

To have this realization on a deeper level, I meet myself… after getting the courage from inside, I stand in front of the mirror, assuming that my reflection in the mirror, is my nineteen-year-old self. Out loud, I say this to her:

I am forgiving you for your honesty. I am forgiving you for not able to make your teenage years productive. I am forgiving you for not loving yourself. I am forgiving you for being non-practical. I am forgiving you for worrying about those things, which you can’t control. I am forgiving you for not having a clear vision of your future self. I am forgiving you for acting like a puppet. I am forgiving you for spending days worrying about others and for having sleepless nights. I am forgiving you for being silent whenever you had a hard time. I am forgiving you for not taking a stand for yourself at this early age. I am forgiving you for the moment when you wanted to be a fashion designer but you got afraid of other’s opinions and gave up on your passion. I am forgiving you for the time when you tore your sketches into pieces. I am forgiving you for not having a proper idea about what kind of man you want to marry. Or even knowing whether you’re ready for it at this early age or not. I am forgiving you for not being kind to yourself. I am forgiving you for following others.  I am forgiving you for being so kind that people took this as your weakness. I am forgiving you for that moment when you spent the whole night crying in the washroom. I am forgiving you for those moments when you were not a teenager anymore but you kept doing things in the same way, you used to do…I am forgiving you for each and everything you did wrong to yourself to make others’ life easy…

I forgive myself. I hadn’t realized it earlier, how it could be this powerful to forgive yourself. I don’t have many regrets in my life because I took my experiences as a learning and promised myself that I’ll try to make myself better and better. And, I am trying. Maybe my process is slow for some people but for all I care, I am moving. I am not still water; one that smells and causes harm to others. I am like a waterfall,y moving as I create soothing sounds and pave my path. I am moving. I am alive. I can do my things as far as I am alive and I have the opportunity.

I always think that I couldn’t have become who I am if I hadn’t faced all these situations in my life. I could be as weak as I was, I could be as unsure as I was, I could be in the same miserable condition I was in. But I am thankful for all these bad moments in my life, I am thankful to that specific dark phase of my life that made me strong. I am thankful to the people who wanted to see me in misery but they unconsciously made me strong and made me fall in love with myself. This is what God has planned for me and he is the best of planners! I am thankful for the new beginning of my life and I am thankful for each day.