It was something that kept my mind occupied.
And that I couldn’t find the words on how to say or even express it.
So, this is what I normally do whenever something like this happens.
I just sit and let the words speak by themselves. Letting my fingers be the extension of what it is that wants to be said on paper.
That is the space the words would come out right.
But the most important thing for me to do, is not just to sit but find the time that there is nothing else.
No need to finish. No boundary of time.
Just me sitting in a space filled with only that.
It doesn’t matter if there are people around. For me it doesn’t matter.
Most of the time I listen to some music with my headset on at the same time.
The attendance of people is not a distraction nor an added value, when I am writing a story in this way. When I think of it, nor is it when I am in a different headspace, so to speak.
To come back to what is occupying my mind, I have been thinking lately a lot about my mother.
How I am becoming more like her and understanding the bloodline of me and her better.
A fear I have been feeling, perhaps even a resistance to not have the same route of life.
However, what is lived, can not be lived twice, is what I feel.
I can’t tell if this is a way of her speaking to me, as my mother has passed on or just my senses telling me to keep on going.
It doesn’t really matter.
I am growing and becoming who I am supposed to be.
Being afraid is part of that, to overcome those hurdles to live a life.
It is this thought of my mother being afraid of getting married.
Actually being afraid of men in general.
However, she had a lot of guys around her. Sometimes being a bit naughty.
Playful in a sense where she would push buttons, to see how far the guys would be willing to go.
I noticed sometimes I do it a bit in my own way, but never as far as she did.
This is just me telling what I feel and expressing my thoughts.
I am always keeping a bit more of my distance, when it comes to men.
Mainly also because I am living in a system that is not where I was brought up.
A sense of care and withholding is at his place and I never tempt any of the guys.
However they are tempting me instead.
Trying to see how far they can go, with me.
Finding an entrance to speak to me or persuading me with presents, mostly it is just words.
Wanting to pay for my ride or wanting to show me what it is they did.
I watch and listen to what they say and then just keep on going with my life.
I find it interesting to be a part of their play and to see them sometimes struggle finding the words they want to say to me.
To see the desperation in their eyes and going beyond themselves, for reasons I can’t tell.
Interesting the least for me to understand why this is happening.
But I also enjoy listening to them and sometimes just pretending.
That playfulness is a legacy of my mother. Something she didn’t do. Pretending to be there.
Where she stuck to her own role and played according to her own rules instead.
It is the freedom of playing, perhaps even fooling around where she shouldn’t.
The place where I am meeting my mother.
Not that I am doing that, but I can feel this pull to do and say things where I shouldn’t and I am just holding my breath instead.
It is at that moment I understood this fear of men she was experiencing and why she kept sticking to her own play.
I wonder if this fear was related to the system that she was living in or the thought that she was going to be arranged anyway and her way of playing until that was happening.
When I think of it, why wouldn’t she do it otherwise.
If this is an arranged path? Knowing you will one day be arranged to an unknown being. Which is scary to me in its essence. I believe I would have done the same.
The form of being naughty. Looking for the boundaries, pushing buttons.
An inner resistance to that system she was living in.
Not another option she could have done differently.
It is a bit sad to me.
But the more I feel my senses in this matter, I think it is related to the system of arranged marriage that she couldn’t resist.
Simply because that was the world she was living in.
The same as my father, who always tried to find ways to escape the caste system, not even speaking of arranged marriage.
I think he was too tired when he came to that place when he finally married my mother. Maybe not even aware of what happened and so he continued what he did before meeting her.
Sticking to his own plan.
The same as my mother did, but just different.
If that is a form of love, I can’t really tell.
It doesn’t sound to me like it is.
Then again, even in the western world where I came to live, due to adoption.
And what is presumed to be love, of choosing who you can marry.
A dream of so many Indians. As that is my reference, because I am also one.
Although that is not my dream.
I don’t really know what that is, that dream.
Instead of fooling around like my mother did, because she knew there would come a day she was going to be sit down and where that life of playfullness would end.
When it comes to that. I would rather have it the otherway around.
I think for me I just want to have fun, untill that moment comes I know what I want and understand better what I dream of when it comes to love.
From what I have seen in western society, there are so many divorces. And I believe the love the western society as a whole is living, is more a fairytale than a reality to me.
If it is love.
Who knows really?
But when it comes to my father and mother.
Both not a choice of marrying who they wanted or who they loved, as it was arranged.
Them coming together could have been a common ground where they could have met and perhaps could have made changes for the benefit of themselves. Perhaps even finding a way out of the systems they were living in. As this is something they longed.
But who knows really?
They have both passed away already.
Perhaps because I am outside of those systems it is that I feel this way.
What I want to say is that we don’t have to live in a system that isn’t good for us and I believe we can make a change if we find common ground.
Because if I look at my parents. Although they are already dead.
In essence they both didn’t want to get married the way they did. Perhaps not even wanted to get married with each other in the first place.
But it happened anyway and it is a fact that I am a product from that system.
Two negatives make a plus.
I can’t deny my own existence.
And I am proud to be their daughter.
It is leaving me the last question that has been occupying my mind.
Although the systems that my parents have lived in : caste system and arranged marriage. And the one I experienced myself and expressed in this story, the adoption system.
I wonder if the world would look different if there was a system where love could live?