I write today, very deeply hurt over events that happened just a few minutes back. I think some part of me had always expected this would be the reception of whatever I was trying to say, but I think I had been in denial of it. And now, the teeth have come to bite my derriere. I think I may have permanently damaged my relationship with my mother, maybe my father too, and killed the trust they had in me and the trust I had in them. I prided myself on having a great set of parents who were liberal with me, who I felt I could talk to about anything under the sun. I thought whatever I would say would be received with a patient ear and a non-judgmental look. But turns out my perceptions were wrong, I have ruined everything. I talked to my mother about sex.
It started off as a conversation about menstrual cups, where I was explaining how menstrual cups have these environmental benefits and other such benefits. I was making a compelling case for them while boldly also talking about how I was also simultaneously slightly queasy about the fact of putting something inside my vagina and keeping it there. It is a very natural discomfort that many menstrual cup users attest to facing during their beginning days. My mother was quite open about it, going so far as to inquire about where we could find it (I assume with the aim of buying and trying it, for her and for me). But she told me that she would also be slightly uncomfortable, as a doctor to advice it for unmarried women (the assumption being that only women who are married should have sex).
I could have left it here, not said anything and I think we could have walked around the issue and pretended it doesn’t exist. But I was feeling bold, I thought I could broach the subject with my mother. I said that it is an assumption that only married women should have sex and that it is an old, Victorian moral idea that we have now adopted as our own, as Indian. I said that sex before marriage is not a wrong thing, that she is in the UK now, doesn’t she see it all around her? Why should she still think it was wrong? She immediately grew very agitated, asking me what I meant. Whether I was implying that I shall also do the same thing. I said that I would aim to date in the future, have boyfriend(s) before I marry, which means that I shall have to answer this question for sure. But I made it clear that it was not to say I shall go around sleeping with everyone. She was immediately angry. She said, that is exactly what I was saying, that I was implying that I shall sleep around and choose a husband, and about what people would say and how she would hang herself in shame.
Things escalated very quickly from there, she told me that she was ashamed of me, that my grandparents would hang themselves in their house hearing the things that were coming from my mouth, whether I thought I was some big feminist, how dare I. She said, yo shall do all this only if you have the independence, and you start earning for yourself right. Then you won’t get to do any of that, you shall stay at home, get married and lead life (I believe that was said in the heat of the moment and not for real, but it shook me nonetheless). She said that this is all because of your college, who is teaching you all this, that she had not even thought about what I could be doing in college, that she had trusted me but now she was afraid of what I would be doing. I tried to tell her that I trusted her, that is why I even thought I could speak to her about such things, but it fell on deaf ears. She pounced on me like a woman possessed, hitting me repeatedly with her chappals, crying out loud like I had done some unspeakable deed, like I had committed a crime of some high magnitude, shouting in my ears that she never, in all her years, thought that her daughter would speak to her like that. She told me that when I had said I was going to this far-off place for college, all her friends and the circle around her had told her that she shouldn’t send me. She told me that my behaviour would make her ashamed in front of all of them. There were a thousand other things she said, all in the heat of the moment, but basically revolving around how dare an 18-year-old speak of sex before marriage.
My father came back home, I had higher hopes for him because he was a doctor of sexually transmitted diseases, which meant that he would have a less judgemental view on sex. I explained that I had meant that sometime in the future, when I was secure and stable in my life, in a job I liked, maybe, when I was independent, I would like to date and have boyfriends (or girlfriends, but I didn’t say it out loud, I had enough trauma to last me for quite a while). He asked me if I knew about protection and safety (which I of course did!), that I was an adult and my life, my body, my thoughts. He said that I should first take small responsibilities before jumping straight to something like that in the first step. My mother, at this point in time, had calmed down a bit more. She said that if I was telling her that at age 24, she wouldn’t react the same way she did. A bit more conversation ensued, mediated in a more calm and collected way by my father, his primary view being that there is nothing inherently wrong or right in the world, it is only in what we see. What a majority believes in does not have to be right, what a minority believes in does not have to be wrong. He said that while I don’t behave the way they might expect me to, I cannot expect them to behave the way I expect them to. And a few more arguments along similar lines, but definitely more open and non-judgmental in its outlook.
I think that has always been something I have admired in my father, a quality I have also tried to emulate a lot of the time. An acceptance of the world, and definitely less judgmental in his outlook. While I will definitely censor myself and be very careful with whatever I say to my parents, I think there might be some hope after all. I have realised a few very uncomfortable things, things that I fear shall now hamper the kind of relationship I have had with my parents. I think my mother is going to definitely worry a lot more about me and I guess that I something I have to deal with. I just wished that maybe things could have gone on in a different way. But we do not have the control to dictate how events should unfold, I am definitely hurt by many things my mother said. I shall hold myself more shyly from now on with her, it is a shame, because I always believed I could have an open relationship with her. But I think it just goes to teach me a thing or two about the kind of parent I should try to be. My father may be a nonjudgmental man but he is most definitely not the most actively initiative-taking one. I have always believed that silence favours the oppressor, my father inevitably also condones my mother, even if he might not believe that. I have a few lessons for myself, and I think, despite the deep hurt I feel (it ruined my mood completely, I am unable to write my paper, I didn’t eat dinner because I feel sick from my stomach), I could take away some things valuable from it. And sometimes, that is the best thing one can do with their circumstances, right?
And that’s my memory for the day.
PS: On reading this, I realise that my reported speech is abominable in many places. My sincere apologies.
The Memory Of A Storyteller 