Feeling-Free

13th October 2004
Freedom and Family
I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to open up to people be genuine with them –whether it’s nice or not-at least be remotely honest. Why am I so gender biased and so guys –shy though I put on this farce of being guy-ish? Why am I keen at warding off remotely possible crushes and hence treating guys with ‘no lower motives’ whatsoever with that aloof pretentious fake manner of mine? Am I in some way SO scared of all this ‘love &crap’? Am I really that shy? And is it all that bad? Is it natural? I don’t know since I’ve never felt it. Do I suppress emotions so much that I’ve become in some way unnatural? I don’t know.
I just hate myself fro being so rigid and narrow minded and unreceptive and unfriendly and warding off so many people by my unwillingness to just be friendly. Is being friends so difficult? Why am I so stuck up with imaginary family norms which don’t really exist? Yesterday Amma was telling me indirectly to use sex appeal when I’ve been striving to make myself seem like a human-being- a gender-less entity since that’s my idea of what I’d like to pretend to believe my family expects of me. Yes! There are certain things they are pretty strict, but very often I worry myself that they might worry and I’ll have to answer uncomfortable questions or I suspect that they will suspect me and I try to make sure there is no blame on me.
Akku who is from the same family has so much more freedom because she lets herself have it. She’s not so driven by family acceptance and she doesn’t need to hide stuff so much. May be I don’t need to hide myself either. May be I should let go. But I’ve always been stiff. I remember how everyone who ever taught me to dance telling me to ‘let go’. And ‘relax’. But I always thought I was pretty normal and I never could ‘let go’. In a trust fall, I never could fall freely trusting others to hold me no matter how much I tried. That’s what I’ve always been –untrusting, tense and unable to let go. So I just dismiss it as my ‘nature’ or can I ‘nurture’ myself to be different?
(I wonder who was the chap she was running away from.)
18th October 2004
True Lies!
Every time I meet this auntie in the colony, I feel this guilty awkward embarrassment because she knows me for the lair that I am. That’s the closest she got to knowing me and what did she find? “A goodly apple rotten at the core”. Pretty sad that that’s the only impression she has of ‘the real me’. She can see through all my half hearted attempts at pseudo-politeness and she can see the stupid girl as dull as to not even tell her tuition teacher her marks in a test in school. Well that’s precisely what happened.
In the 11th standard the hunt for another tuition teacher began. This aunty was discovered and a friend and I went to her house for three classes. She taught us like the first and second chapters. We had attest in school and both of us failed miserably. I went out of town and my friend who came to know our marks told her. Later when I came back I found out my marks. She asked me and I lied saying I didn’t know. I really wanted her to think I was intelligent and bright and stuff. Well she probably thought I was-only in the wrong ways. After that every time I met her I felt embarrassed and guilty and behaved weird. So now she seems to have given up hope.
(I could never understand what went wrong with that tuition arrangement. Now a minor mystery is solved!)