1
I am in bed, encased in my tent-like, pink mosquito net, writing in a notebook new promises to myself. I write in notebooks whenever I catch myself sinking into a depression. These episodes are characterised by fatigue, overeating, negative self-talk punctuated by staring at my nose for too long, crying, withdrawing from society, and insomnia. When I manage to sleep, I still feel awake. My body is tired, but my mind cannot shut down. Instead, I lie in bed, floating, dreaming, and waiting for my alarm to ring. Tonight, I have decided that this must stop.
I try to make sense of what I have written in my dishevelled handwriting. For the uncountable time, I have written that I will not get into any arguments about gender again. I will walk away from acts of misogyny, swallow my words, and forgive ahead. I will speak softly, and my words will be seasoned with salt. I will embody grace, warmth, and feminine energy.
This is not the first time I am doing this. At different points in my life, I have written in other notebooks my many attempts to constrain myself.
I shake my head, willing myself not to think about the obvious failures of my past resolutions. Things will be different this time. I end my journaling with the serenity prayer: Lord, give me the wisdom to accept the things I cannot change. I wait to feel a settling of peace, a coating of tranquillity, but I feel nothing except the fatigue I’ve been carrying around for weeks.
I wake the next day with forced enthusiasm. Just another day as a corps member, I tell myself. But before the day runs out, a distant friend has referred to a woman as a “ran-through 31-year-old”. For ignoring his catcall, a random man on the street has told me, in between obscenities, that he has my type at home.
When I finally settle in bed that night, every resolution I had written has been broken. I had uttered unseasoned words. I had been confrontational and combative. In fact, some residual anger is left simmering in my chest.
As I try to sleep in stifling heat, I cover my face – part shame, part exhaustion, part despair. I didn’t even last a day. Again.
A long time ago, someone called me an angry bird because I asked him not to make casual, derogatory comments about my body. I have heard many variants of those words. Aggressive. Abrasive. Stiff-necked. Sometimes, the variants come as questions: Why can’t you just ignore? Sometimes, as disappointment: You are listening to those feminist people, I pity you. Sometimes, as conclusions: Ah, the person that will marry you will try o!
My despair intensifies. My eyes begin to leak. I cry till I fall asleep in small spurts.
2
I grew up hearing that knowledge is power. This constant iteration created in me a desire to know many things. I paid attention in class. I listened to my elders. I read my books. I observed the world, watching and memorising its many machinations. Now that I am older, I see that although knowledge may be power, it is also a curse, a kind of astronomic, never-ending grief.
Nobody told me that knowledge could make you heavier, less flexible, less enchanted with the world. Somewhere along the line, everything begins to look so bleak; you begin to appear psychotic, seeing things others cannot see.
Friedrich Nietzsche calls this climbing down into chaos. “Your manner of…climbing as a person of knowledge is your doom,” he writes, “for you, solid ground crumbles away into uncertainty; your life is no longer supported by pillars, but only by spider webs that are torn apart by every new grasp of your knowledge.”
In a 1961 interview, when James Baldwin was asked about being black in America, he responded, “…to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time.”
The first time I read those words, I began to examine my realities through the lens of knowledge, Baldwin’s conscious experiences of racism mirroring my conscious experiences of misogyny. For the first time, I saw the root of my never-ending despair: the presence of knowledge, the perpetuity of consciousness.
So, when I rented an apartment and the caretaker failed to fumigate the house, repair the leaking roof, or fix my plumbing and electricity issues, I knew it was not because he was obtuse. It was because I was “this small girl”. When I found a man to speak to him, the repairs came swiftly, accompanied by apologies and explanations.
So, when, one day, an Okada man asked me to remove my bag from between his body and mine so he could feel my “package”, I knew it was not because he was obtuse. It was because he grew up in a society that has told him it’s okay to say this to a woman.
So, when the male nurse at my place of assignment insisted on hugs every morning, I refused to agree that it was mere friendliness. He did not hug other male staff. He did not make a performance of holding on to their bodies and smiling widely afterwards. I had marched to my manager’s office to report the nurse. The manager perfunctorily warned the nurse. “He’s just playing with you,” he said. “Try to see it from his perspective.”
I had marched back to my desk, chastising myself for expecting a different outcome. I should have learned by then that to be a woman was to prioritise the perspectives of others above my own, accepting that I am always inherently wrong. But I never learned. I continued to hope, to fight, to think in shoulds. Nobody should talk to me like that. Women should not be treated like this. Marriage should be like this.
I know what I can have, and even though it remains out of reach, I continue to insist on it.
3
Years ago, a driver I hired had spoken to me rudely. Like many men, he boasted that he could “handle me”. He was loud and obstinate and always ended his diatribe with a shake of his head. My male friends sprang to the rescue to ensure he did what I wanted him to. But none of them told him he could not speak to me in that manner. None of them was offended by the insult I had received. Instead, they said: “He has done what you want na, why are you still angry?”
The matter was settled and that was that. I was asked to move on.
Move on. Let it go. Pick your battles. Often said as part of a plethora of well-meaning advice.
Younger me saw my inability to move on easily as a deep moral failing. Over time, I learned to loathe myself. I spent many hours wishing for a different personality, praying to God to take my anger away.
Older me understands that it doesn’t matter which battle I pick; it will never be the right battle. It will be a small issue, something I could overlook if I really wanted to, something I am bigger than. But then, I learned to self-censure, to navigate the world seeking the approval to be angry.
“Is my anger legitimate?” I type in DMs to my friends.
It has become crucial to hear a vocal yes, to receive support to feel things I have to feel. On the rare occasion I find someone who understands my anger, I am overcome with gratitude. But my joy doesn’t last very long.
When my anger is approved, I am told to be gentle-angry. Don’t be now-angry, be later-angry. Be pissed off but silently. Kindly. Feminine-ly.
4
On a call with a friend from Finland who is worried about me, he says, “I don’t think you’re fine at all.”
“Why?” I ask, my head askew, my phone held firmly between my ear and shoulder. I am folding clothes in the light of a bluish-purplish bulb that makes the actual colours of the clothes undecipherable.
“This women stuff,” he starts.
He tells me he has been following my WhatsApp updates and all I talk about is women: women harassed, women killed, women in workplaces, women in Afghanistan.
First, he doesn’t understand why I am always talking about it. He insists there’s no need to go on and on about the woman assaulted in a church or massacred on a BRT Bus. I don’t have to tell everyone that my friends pretend to have husbands so they can find apartments to rent, or that I know someone who was given an ultimatum to marry. I could simply support women in my actions. In fact, I don’t need to call myself a feminist to begin with. Being a good Christian is having feminist values anyway.
Second, he believes I am biased. There are good things happening to women (he lives in the world’s feminist capital, for instance!). Why don’t I ever talk about those?
Third, he does not understand why I like to stress myself. He worries for my mental health and wants me to think about my wellbeing. He wants me to focus on my job, have fun, live my life, and mentor some younger girls in their careers.
“Do you think,” he asks emphatically, “that people will want to associate with someone who is always talking negativity?”
“I am not always talking negativity,” I want to say. “I write about so many things, I have so many interests,” I want to shout. But I am exhausted, tired of my dreaminess, my fixation on my ability to change one mind, to get one more person to notice, to react, to be enraged. So, I say nothing and let him continue.
The call lasts about an hour. After, I sit on my bed. I stand, pace, open my wardrobe. I walk to the window. I hear the laughter of women, the clatter of plates, the chatter of children, music playing from behind the fence. I abandon my intentions to sort and fold clothes and decide, once more, to leave the issues alone.
5
Often, I meet women who do not seem affected in any way. Grateful women, who grab male benevolence with both hands. Happy, content women with the right outlook on life. Women who do not notice the atrocities I can see a mile away. Women who believe I see these things because I want to see them. They tell me not to bother with such nonsense, teaching me instead to take, use, and transform the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.
Nowadays, older women look at me, chuckle and promise me the death of my strong-headedness. They prophesy humility and contrition into my future. My problem is youthful exuberance, nothing more.
“I did more than you in my time,” they say with derision, their eyes giant globes of pity, certain that one day, I will learn.
I don’t know if I am learning, but I know that it is exhausting to almost always be in a state of resistance. To constantly have to prove you are not consumed by your activism. To be lectured, without fail, about your impending bitterness.
Resistance is hard. The constant pushback. The defensiveness. Resistance chips away at the spirit. The chipping away leads to self-doubt, self-hate, uninstalling social media, staying indoors, avoiding the news, avoiding people, fracturing friendships, writing unrealistic resolutions into notebooks.
The life I have chosen, this insistence to remain a feminist, brings with it moments of despondency and many aggravations. Sometimes I imagine that I’d rather live another kind of life. But that’s not true. I do like my life, my optimism, my dreaminess, my relentless hopefulness, even though the world gives me many reasons not to be. Despite everything, and perhaps because of it, I remain committed to how I wish to be seen, how I want to be treated. I stubbornly refuse to dilute my worth or adulterate my experience of womanhood.
*Photo by Emmanuel Phaeton on Unsplash