Weddings & Marriages

Growing up, I had always been made aware of the fact that one day I will get married and will start living with another family. And as a 10 year old girl, I sometimes used to cry my eyes out at night while thinking about this, wondering how will I ever live without my parents. But life went on.

In my early 20s, I started to see other issues with weddings and marriages, all the patriarchal norms, sexist customs and that made it all the more problematic for me. Still, I knew somewhere deep down that this is a plunge that I would have to take, one way or the other, no matter how hard I fight back, because it mattered to my family and. probably because I did want companionship ultimately. And life went on.

As a single woman who is fast approaching the dreadful 30s, and attending weddings of friends every other day, my family and I are going crazy about my future. Will I find a guy? How will I find a guy? Are we late? And it is very pressurizing and makes me feel lonely as well. So even though I am happy for my friends, and I do want to get married, the whole thing has started to bother me for a whole different reason now. And yet life is still going on.

But I am not going to talk about how much I hate weddings and marriages in this post. No.

I was just thinking about how when we attend a wedding of someone that we love, and see them get married to someone they love, it just brings so much joy. You are genuinely so happy and thrilled for them, for a new start in their life, for the new bonds that they will be making, for new milestones that they will be achieving. Weddings let you witness everyone related to the journey of these two individuals. And even though it is of no use to meet all these persons whom you are gonna forget the next day and never ever meet again, it is joyous to see how much these two love birds matter to so many people and who are just here to celebrate them (barring a few uncle and aunties there to just diss and comment, and the wedding crashers).

I am not saying that weddings and marriages are the only way to celebrate the love and bond of two individuals. It is a free world, 21st century, and the rules of the society are very much bendable as per our will. But given how I have always hated these ceremonies, it makes me feel good to finally accept and understand some meaning behind it all, to finally see the uniting of love and rejoice in it.

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Moving Away

I am considering moving away, bringing in some big change in my life and starting over somewhere. Do I need to? Maybe no. But do I want to? Yes. I want to. I want to get out of the house and do something. And the place where I live is limiting in that regard. I cannot simply go out and do something. I cannot go out and roam around, I cannot go out and travel alone. I am just so dependent on others, my friends and family. But I want freedom. I want to feel in charge of where my life is heading, and sleeping in my parents’ apartment, handed food in my hand in my room by my mom, is not the way to go. It is not bad in my country to live with your parents but I think there is a reason why west came up with the term of moving out. Because the process of moving out and fending for yourself is what gives you ultimate power, what makes you responsible. It is scary, yes. Will I feel lonely? Will I feel afraid? Will I get tired of doing so much work for my livelihood? Yes I guess so. But don’t I feel lonely already even when I am with friends and family, when sometimes I am not able to completely express myself? Don’t I still feel afraid when I feel my life is going nowhere, that I am a loser? Don’t I feel bad that my mom has to do manual work on my behalf because I live under her roof? So it makes sense to start over, right? Hopefully it will transform my life, or atleast me as a person, in a good way. Is this post a way to seek validation and assurance from others on my decision? Yes it is. But despite how much validation we may seek from others, we kind of always know internally what we really want to do. And this time I feel like I really want this.

Does she have it all sorted?

I often lay awake at night and wonder, do people look at me, and think that she has it all sorted?

Because in my head, I am clearly doing it all wrong. I look at various other people, and just pick some aspects of their lives which appeal to me and conclude that they are living the best life there is to live.

Some have an amazing partner, and they never had to go through multiple break ups to find them. It’s almost as if they are reaping the benefits of some good karma in another lifetime.

While others have a successful career, they are living in a better country, earning more money and getting far more opportunities to grow.

Others are just happy in what they have, be it less or more. They have some passion that brings them joy, be it travelling, writing, making reels, anything. But they enjoy it so much that they hardly have time to worry about what others are doing, what they themselves are lacking.

And here I am, wondering why I am doing things so wrong that I am not satisfied at all. There is no lack of opportunity for me to achieve any of the above. It’s the courage and the determination where I lag behind. And sometimes, the culprit is not knowing what I really want and the will to go after it.

I feel that many unsaid standards have been set by the world on the quality of life and we are always comparing ourselves against them. The worst part is, these standards keeps on changing, so even if we achieve one thing, tomorrow there would be a new goal in town and our achievement would get obsolete. And because of just following the herd, we often miss out on finding what we really want while trying to keep up with the world.

Also, I am not blind or immature. I know about the truth of social media and what people slow in their stories is far from reality. I know that the lives of others look more rosy from the outside and in their normal every day lives, they are struggling too.

I hope that even my life looks better from the outside and all my inner turmoils aren’t visible.

And so I wonder, do people look at me, and think that she has it all sorted?