"That confused girl"

 There are many things to say to you, but she chooses to zip her words into a sigh as if telling the obvious would make it irrelevant. I don't think we learn to speak during childhood, I think we keep learning it till we become quiet. Silence is composed of a thousand words whereas sometimes all it is that a thousand words say is "nothing". I know the power of words and so I am not quiet when it comes to speaking the unsaid obvious. There is a girl at my window staring at the passing clouds thinking to herself where does she stand in her life; is she a passing cloud too, would she ever know stillness? There are two kinds of people in the world; one who knows the word, the other who knows the meaning. There is one more kind who fall at the intersection of the two; the hybrid one, who knows the meaning of the word and the "when and where science" of using it. At every stage of knowledge of the word and of the meaning and of the usage, the bar of responsibility goes three times higher. I would say as a lazy head that not knowing comes with the baggage of immense comfort. Not knowing a word renders only one responsibility i.e., to know, whereas knowing dooms us to two more, for a lifetime. But still, as I said comfort is baggage and it weighs big to not dare come out of it. Women speak in many languages and most of them aren't made of words. We realize very late that words have energy and that it travels and that it can complement their silence in ways nothing else can. I don’t remember my first words but I do remember my first silence; in fact, all silences. I don’t like too much talking and I don’t like diplomatic silences and I kind of don’t associate well with people belonging to each category. Your vocabulary is an indirect but firm representation of all the people you have met in life. The way you use that vocabulary is how you have sewed your identity through those people and their words. Colors are the vocabulary of flowers; thorns are the way they call out their offenders. The scent is the way they talk, the way they use their vocab. What’s my scent then? And what’s yours? How do my words smell? And how do I perceive your smell? This time I am using words to unfold my silences so that you can taste the smell of the people I have met.

As a teen, I really wished to be a boy; not because of my inclination to the XY chromosome, but because of the way I saw their lives. Men in this world have a lesser chance of explaining their lives to others, even less is a chance for anybody to raise a question on their way of life. I don’t need a statistic for it, it’s not a fact because it’s a reality, it’s an everyday occurrence. The reason it’s not a fact is that it’s not documented, and the reason it’s a reality is that we experience it. Not everything that’s fact unwinds into reality and not everything that we experience becomes a fact. I know it’s a big paradox, I know it’s complex and I know nobody knows everything about either fact or reality. So for me, the metric remains are my own experience and the experiences of the vocabs I have come across. 

Somehow for some unknown reason, men seem confident, sorted, and carefree. Their emotions are like fossils, buried deep down somewhere filled with flammable resources of love, angst, feelings, and all that what makes one human.....inside, buried, and caved. I think as they grow they keep adding more layers to their fossilized souls until one day when they are old and back to tiring childhood, they figure out their untapped resources and realize that they lived a more manly life than a humanly one. Life was meant to be lived with the resources we bring to the earth as a living body. It's not an act, we are not part of the play; I am not here to make a good show out of my amazing ability to be seen presentable all the time. I know Shakespeare's spirit would think of me as a rebel, but I'll be happy that I made him think. 

  In science, if you have to understand a protein, you have to deprive the cell of that protein; and see what happens, how does the cell behaves/ what changed in the cell without that protein. So when you want to understand a woman, you have to deprive yourself of understanding that woman. Instead, the subject of your study should be the men in her life because subconsciously the heart of the world to date is still patriarchal in nature; it is running for how a man would want it to. I have heard people say words like equality, empowerment, and others citing that the world is not pro-man anymore and that there's hardly any inequality or fewer opportunities for women. Interestingly, the people I have heard this from are all men; their vocabularies seldom acknowledge the reality. What they didn't understand is that there shouldn't have been inequality and discrimination in the first place. Every term that tries to address the same is slowly maligned and butchered and tabooed into thinking that it is anti-men and not worth addressing. Famously misunderstood vocabulary is the word called "feminism", solely because it has the sound of the word, feminine in it. History is not a buried fossil, it's just as naked as a newborn. 

Women as a species are the most confusing being probably because they have to take a thousand extra decisions just to go through their day, as a woman. They are too sensitive, they cry easily or cry often; because the world is not a nice place often and probably she cares too much about the nice stuff. They are mean, bitchy, overreactive, manipulative, dumb folks that dig gold. It's neither an idea nor a complete reality to find women like the one I just described. There are all kinds of women just as there are all kinds of men. There are all kinds of pains just as all kinds of passion.

Have you ever seen or held a baby lamb? That's how innocent, mushy, and welcoming a woman is as a kid. The heart is not inside her, it is always outside; fully exposed on her face and pristine. It's as if every day is a school trip day; full of life and godly energy. God falls in love with such a bundle of truth. Girls grow in a very different way than boys, they don't grow, they just have to become more stone-hearted with each passing year. They never get to enjoy their growth, both physical and mental. Before they can think, they are made to think a certain way; the way a woman should be. No writer in the world can describe the beauty of a woman who is marvelously herself, totally, utterly her own skin and bones just because it's that unbelievable and offensive. In fact, it comes off as a disguise when a woman is unapologetically herself. It raises more than eyebrows, more than frowns, more than controversy; it raises questions. We don't have to be a certain way because there is no way that is certain. While growing up, we look up to our mothers, we learn to care, love (unconditionally unvalued for granted kinda love) from her. We learn that a woman provides; food, warmth, and a womb. It goes unnoticed what she receives because the happiness of her children is her reward, is her currency of a worthy life. Often I think of my mom and cry because I don't understand the logic behind being so selfless about one's smallest need; be it the last piece of cake or the first person to rise in the morning every day to make breakfast. Every time I adore my mom, I adore myself and I adore every single inch of my body and heart, and mind because they have her imprint in them. They have integrity, grit, and the immense capacity of the same wreckless love that she has. But mom lives at home and I do not. I stepped out to fulfill my dreams, to give my education some meaning, and somehow not have the kind of life that my mom lived. Women like me who step out of their homes to establish their meaning in the world often go through an excruciating phase of confusion. A part of their mom's heart in them makes it very difficult for them to fathom the circus of the world. They think that now they can be themselves and express their heart but that's where they get struck by the lightning of the real-life; the life without mom. Of all the things that I haven't become in life, the one thing I am proud of that I haven't become is, somebody else. The amount of imperfection I carry within myself might be as large as an ocean but it still isn't enough to drown me into thinking that I shouldn't be myself. I may offend you by showing you a mirror, but I would also make sure that the reflection from the mirror is just enough for you to see clearly and not blind you with light. I wouldn't talk much or entertain you all day but often when you'd need an ear, you would find me listening. For me when it comes to love, the sky is the limit but when you just wake me up in the morning with your holy adoration, I feel like I am beyond the sky, I feel like I am the Sun. Women like me after leaving home, fight the hardest battle with only one thing;  confidence. Even after producing a great degree of work, I have witnessed how the fossil of confidence is made to be just unearthed enough to work but not so much to appreciate yourself for it. I haven't come across a single woman whose confidence bewilders me, astonishes me, shakes me. I have seen them digitally or in movies but not many because there too it's a rare occurrence. The reason is not that there are no fully confident women, there are. You would just not find a confident woman be insecure about her confidence and so most probably she would avoid unworthy conversations of proving her worth. Either that or a man could be behind her success of unevidenced confidence. The men in a woman's life play an undeniably great role in her own views about herself. I know it's sad but it is true. It starts with fathers being fathers and then it turns to men being men. Ironically when a man is a father, he is less of a 'manly' creature and more of 'what men should be for real'; supportive, secure, and full of love. My father can't tolerate tears in my eyes, it wrecks him from inside to see me cry. But he hasn't witnessed the baggy swollen eyes of my wrecked times because he says that crying is for weak and so I strongly hide them from him. I am weak, and then I am strong, and then again both of it. I had cried like I had never cried before; I do cry like I had never cried before; I will cry like I have never cried before because every time I cry I become resilient to crying and every time I become resilient to crying, I get to cry again. Every tear that has left your eyes has been shot by the bullet of your soul to let you know that you got yourself. Women like me who step out of the home carrying a piece of their mom's heart with them are doomed to multiple episodes of crying and heart-wrenching pain because the world isn't a mom's womb or a dad's lap. The world is unforgiving. It will test your integrity and faith every minute if it has to. We don't have anyone outside the home even if we have someone because we ourselves won't stop judging ourselves ever. There is an invisible and undeclared gravitational pull of seeming put together. There will be days cuz there are days when the girl inside our womanhood screams the school trip kinda excitement but we will bury her inside our pillows like soaked tears just because we aren't 10-year-olds anymore. I repeat again girls never grow up from their childhood, they just become who the world expects them to be because at the end of the day they will remain a body first and then a mind. Therefore, if they find a man who brings back their childhood, is loved by them like crazy deep. You are lucky if a man loves you crazily, you are blessed if a woman loves you truly. Because the love of a woman is the same as the love of a mother. She shares the same piece of her mom's heart that she left her home with; the same unconditional for granted kind of love that creates life. Women like me who leave their homes to fulfill their dreams find it hard to settle for anything other than love. Love is the only weakness we are cursed with, anything else can be dealt with.  I have come across such beautiful women in my life that I have no words for them; ONLY ADORATION. Although less in numbers, I have met beautiful men too and I must tell you that if there's one thing that comes even close to a morning sunrise, it has to be a big-hearted gentle generous man. A beautiful man is the most expensive gift of this unfair world. It feels as if I am talking about God when I talk about a beautiful man.

So next time when you come across a woman like me; think of her as a behaved kid or a self-trained body of work because we are almost always more than 'that confused girl'. We have trained ourselves to not let our reserved childhood leak out of our sleeves, by making an angry curve out of our eyebrows. But we can't discipline our smile to behave maturely. 

There are flowers that bloom when you make a woman laugh, so if you wish to live in a garden keep her happy because she is still a kid hoping to enjoy her childhood with you...