One day while cleaning my room, pretending to flush out all the trash to satisfy my obsessively hygienic mom, I came across a set of things which belonged to me, yet seemed to belong to another strange girl with whom I couldn’t even imagine being friends with. It was one of those embarrassing moments where you wouldn’t want the person you were in the past to be associated with you in anyway. It’s weird how over time we develop a personality completely contrasting from whom we thought we would be.
Staring at those things evoked a train of thoughts in my head.
It reminded me of a 10 year old girl who saw the world purely through her parents’ perspective.She lived to believe that noone could provide a better definition of “right” and “wrong”.Life could not be perceived in a better way, she believed. She tried her best to live up to their expectations of ”ideal”, cause that was indeed her idea of ideal.
A few years down the lane, a curious teenager realised that she was yet to discover what the world had in store for her. It was overwhelming yet confusing to realise that she was entitled to her own perspectives, her own definitions of life. It was an era of contradictory opinions, one second she believed in something and in the next, she would be proved wrong. She had to decide now, and that wasn’t easy. Sometimes her friends would mock her for what she believed in and at other times her parents were disappointed. It confused her, it hurt her. She wondered why she felt guilty. Why couldn’t she live the life she believed in? Why wouldn’t her parents understand?
There were so many ”why”s, it drove her insane. It was too difficult. Sometimes all she yearned for was escape. Life tried to knock her down at every step, but somewhere along the way she learnt to build that wall higher up. She discovered that being wrong in someone else’s eyes didn’t necessarily mean that she was wrong. Wrong and right were also little descendents of perspective. She realised that she had to bid adieu to the notion of happy endings. Life was not easy, but it was “HER LIFE”now.
She opened herself to life, to the little things. She learnt to own her mistakes and let go of the regrets. Moreover, she learnt to love herself, even with all those flaws. She now recognized those imperfections as a part of her identity. She welcomed the changes that life induced in her.
When I look at myself now, I am proud of that girl who dared to take all those leaps, who refused to give up even when life was a bitch to her. I am no longer the ideal daughter nor that confused teenager. But those are the people who made me the woman I am today.
Perhaps, it’s true, “Eventually over time, we become our own doppelgangers, you know, these completely different people who just happen to look like us.”