Decisions

As a kid, I always wanted to be an adult. I mean who didn't? I'd see my parents making important decisions and then depending on how things went, they'd either make the best of what was handed to them or try to make a difference. I wanted to do that. I couldn't wait to be an adult. I thought it would be simple... That transition from being a child to an adult. I always imagined that I would wake up one day and know that I'd become an adult. I'd intrinsically know how to make life decisions. My parents and all the other adults I knew made it look so easy.

Being at a precipice makes you realize that maybe it wasn't so easy. There are decisions to be made about everything. They range from something as irrelevant as what I'm going to eat today or wear today, to something as ridiculously large like what am I doing with my life? I see friends from all walks of life. I see them going to parties, getting drunk, getting married, having babies. And I see friends who lose someone they love. They decide how they're going to live their lives. They take lemons and make their own version of the lemonade.

Some decisions are harder to make than others. How do you know that decisions that you make aren't going to come back tomorrow and bite you in the ass? What do you trust to make decisions? The heart or the brain? Some people will tell you to trust the gut. But what makes a decision a good decision? There are always consequences to any decision you make. Everyone always tells you about the consequences. Don't do activity A or you will go through X.  Nobody teaches you how to make a decision. Maybe they should.

Being an adult hasn't been easy so far, but what do I know, I'm still a kid trying to be an adult. At the end of the day, aren't we all? 

Beauty

A friend of mine once told me that I would look nicer if I "lost a little bit of weight and (was) a little fairer". That night I came home and cried for a few hours. There are days when I look at myself in the mirror and I wonder, did I get a new zit, did I gain an extra bit of fat right here. I look under my eyes and I see the eye-bags, the dark circles. I see the little flaws that nobody would care about. Yet I do it. I wear makeup to make myself feel prettier, because my entire life I've been told that fairer skin was prettier. Having my eyes look a certain way would make me more attractive. Wearing a certain shade of lipstick made me look like a "slut". People have issues when I wear make up and when I don't wear make up. There is no pleasing everybody. There's no way that I can just walk out of the house and not be judged for how I look.

I don't always put an effort into what I wear, but when I do, I do it for myself, not because I want you to think I look attractive in photos or in real life. I do it because I feel like when I dress up, I meet the beauty standards society has taught me. I do it because I want to feel pretty. And even though it's for myself, I  find myself conforming to society's expectations of me. I haven't yet learnt to accept my body for what it looks like. I always find myself looking at the fatter parts of my body and feeling conscious about it.

I don't want to nitpick on every single part of me. I want to learn to accept my body for what it is. I don't want to live in a world where I am judged every single day for not meeting your standards of beauty. I want to start living in a world, where the only standard of beauty I am held up to, is my own! 

Dear CatCaller

******
Dear Random Guy on the street, 

No! I am not interested in smiling for you. I just want to get to work on time and get down to helping people live better lives.

Dear Mr. Construction worker, 

If me telling you I'm engaged is the only thing that will stop you from harassing me, then I'll make up a fiancee. Also, thank you for making me feel unsafe on my daily walk to work. You've forced me to look around me for your presence each time I walk past the spot where you called out to me.

Dear Random Guy at the club, 

Yes, I'm a good dancer, but that doesn't mean I have to dance with you. Thanks for calling me a bitch just because I said no!

Dear Other Random guy, 

Atleast try to ask for permission before you decide to press up against me and hold my hips in place. I don't appreciate having your groin pressed up against my backside without even knowing what's going on!
*******

Yes, I am a woman and yes, I have breasts and wide hips. Does that make me attractive? I don't know, maybe it does, and maybe not. However, that does NOT give you the right to make me feel unsafe and vulnerable when I am going about my daily life. It does NOT give you the right to say that you were "complimenting me" and that I should just be humble and accept your "compliment". If your unwanted attention should be considered a compliment, I think I'd rather live life without it.

It has been drilled in my mind, that I should try my best to dress appropriately, I force myself not to wear clothes that come across as "slutty", a term that society has forced on women to prevent her from wearing things she might feel comfortable in. I hear all these stories of rape where a large part of society seems to say, she shouldn't have been wearing that, she asked for it! But who the hell are you to tell a woman what to wear and what not to wear? Why is expected for a woman to dress a certain way when a man could wear anything he wants and not have the same level of scrutiny placed on him? The other day, I saw a couple running on the streets on a rather hot afternoon. They were both shirtless and the woman sported a sports bra while the man was bare chested. A friend of mine looked at me and said, well, that seems inappropriate! I glared at him and wondered out loud why it was OK that the guy could take his shirt off when it got too hot but the girl couldn't? He just mumbled something about societal standards.

Why is it that some men feel they have a right to get away with things like catcalling while women have to either be rebels and do whatever the hell we want to do or cower in the shadows, being afraid of when the next person may come up and "hit on" us. Consent is something that is often lacking in these interactions. My clothes do not imply consent. Only me saying that you could do something is consent!

So, dear CatCaller, the next time you think it's great to compliment me by telling my I have a fine ass or that I would look prettier with a smile on my face, just know that I am a strong, independent woman and you may try to harass me, but I know who I am and I'm not going to give in to the need to be silent!

P.S. The video above  is a perfect explanation of what women go through almost every day :-/ It needs to stop!

Brooklyn: the movie, and how it affected me

2015 was a great year for me. It was a year for new beginnings in a country that I had never been to before. A country that was across the world from the places I had grown up in, the places I had become a young lady in. Watching Brooklyn brought back memories of the fear I went through when I was a first time immigrant. Would I be alright? Would I be able to find a new life for myself? The path I was interested in taking seemed like it would be one that was best for me, but I had no way of knowing for sure.

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It took me time and a few buckets of tears before I felt like I could settle in. There were moments of sadness when nothing felt right and it made me question my decision of leaving behind everything and everyone I loved to come to this strange, unknown place. It was the coldest I had ever been in my life (physically and emotionally). Homesickness. That was what people said it was. They all said it would become normal eventually.

I met people, and slowly but surely, I came out of my little hole. There were times where like the protagonist of the movie, I felt like my body was there but my heart was elsewhere. With time, it moved somewhere in between the Pacific/Atlantic (really depends on which way you want to travel across the globe). There are still times when I pine for my past and wonder what my world would have looked like if I had stayed in Asia.

Maybe going back would show me why I chose to leave in the first place or maybe it would just remind me of reasons I should stay. The movie beautifully captures this conundrum. There are so many things that could possibly hold you back in the past, and your decisions are heavily affected by whether you choose to stay in your past and make your future there or take that risk and move on. Leave your past behind and choose to make a new life for yourself.

Because at the end of the day, despite the homesickness and all the nostalgia, "One day you'll catch yourself thinking about something or someone who has no connection with the past, and you'll realize that this is where your life is." When I reflect on what the past year has helped me achieve, it truly makes me realize that this where I would like my future to be. Whether or not that would be possible, remains to be seen.

Overall, I would highly recommend you watch this movie, because almost everyone has a similar story that you can relate to, even if you didn't travel all around the world.

P.S. Saoirse Ronan is so beautiful and has performed extraordinarily well. Your heart breaks with hers and the way she carries you through the movie is simply fantastic.