If talking against patriarchy is feminism, sorry I am out because it is one of many things that oppress the lives of woman. WO-MEN are the Worthy Opposite of men, complimenting and not the compromising ones. Feeling empowered to chase one's dreams, being confident, independent and self-sufficient is what leads you to fighting your way up the ladder.
When is one self sufficient? Is it
when they are financially independent;
when they take decisions on their own;
when they have a control over what happens in their life;
or
when they know to take care of their daily needs like housekeeping, laundry, cooking, etc.
Sometimes our state of mind and perspectives are so very hard to describe, may be because it isn't a while/black situation, it is pretty much a grey area atleast in developing countries as we are tuned to be so by default.
It is so disheartening to see women claim that they are superior to men and state facts of how they manage multiple things in life, both personally and professionally and at the end of all of this #FEMINISM.
No one is superior and all lives matter. In the fight/protest amidst the survival of the fittest, most humans lack empathy now.
Empowerment is progress but not at the cost of someone else's life. Most people exploit the situations around them to manipulate certain sensitive matters and take advantage of that as well.
What more than half of the world is missing out, is the need to check for facts and verify them before processing it with their school of thoughts. We tend to act as a herd, just doing things under the influence of what others do or for the sake of being in the limelight.
Every woman was once the little princess of her father/guardian, a young bubbly teenager who was super curious about everything around her, and then a young woman who started to enjoy the ways her body, mind and heart evolved in the process of adulting.
And then she falls in love, loves that partner of hers, so fiercely, so terribly that she’ll do everything she can for the rest of her life to make sure she enjoys the small happiness in her pleasure of sharing life. Passionate is her love, sometimes a little cheesy, a lot more mysterious, and when in mood swings sounds sickening too.
Her love is a knotted one, looks messy from the outside but she rightly knows how to blend it right, and enjoy the essence of eternal pleasure of being passionate about someone. A love that’s confusing, twisted and often shakes her upside down. She’ll put her faith and her emotions in the hands of this other person and expects their true self to compliment the love bestowed on him/her/they.
Sometimes it is so conflicting, the fact that you are madly in love but also the person you are and your state of mind can't tolerate abuse, patriarchy, gas lighting, mockery, manipulation and even domination. She then struggles and craves for the sense of self independence and looses her true self when her thoughts make her blind processing the justifications & excuses thrown at her.
Her path by then gets tangled with the other and that then, terrifies more than thrills.
Her world is then no more the same, she then starts fighting her inner battle. She builds mind castles and starts believing that it is her reality. You find yourself curling, twirling and hugging to that person like a puppy, craving for that soothing touch, his/her/their arms tangled with hers. You end up being that woman who confides into your partner, his/her/their power, his/her/their strength and the one who falls into his/her/their arms when she is lost. You feel you are beautiful and your story is a magic until you realise your inner self slipping off slowly.
And when suddenly things go the other way. she starts feeling deserted, she starts breaking little by little, becomes weak, emotionally vulnerable and what not. She is now that woman for whom her very own story is hard to believe, and she tries running away from the reality. The hands that touched her once crushes her now. Darned by the pressures of what the society enforces on her, she then tries to forget and forgive, swinging along these hardships, letting go of things that were close to her heart like they don’t matter anymore.
The world called her bold, strong, confident, ambitious, outspoken and passionate, but only she knew her vulnerabilities and how that has put her in pain and despair which is doesn't talk about in public. Her fear of being judged, her fear of loosing her close kins, her fear of the society labelling her what she is not.
Now she fears to fall in love!
She then finds the one who completes her, compliments her, confronts her and not the one who controls her and the deeply sunk lover woman in her awakes.
She is incomplete, without those tantrums she throws, without those drama she does, without those tears she sheds, without her passion and love for pleasure and without that restlessness she adorns everyday.
Yes, she is strong yet intensely emotional, awkwardly weird, inevitably vulnerable, but that is who she is to the fullest. She is not a feminist yet, but she is definitely working towards how not to justify toxicity in the name of love.
All of this or not, she just loves to be the woman who loves herself and always let others love her as well.
Irshad ran his magic of finishing this picture of mine.