|“Your life begins when you marry”
is a lesson entwined in the mind of many young girls, one that isn’t taught in any schools or universities, but one that begins at home, particularly in South Asian households. It starts subtly, when we’re taught to hand a glass of water to the guests in a tray and we hear someone amongst them say, “I see, you have begun her training already” followed by a faint snickering. It’s everywhere, one cannot possibly escape it. This lesson taught is why our mothers remain so adamant over making us learn how to cook, its presence remains evident in seeing our mothers pick up the plates at the dinner table at the end of the meal each day, meal after meal.
Do not be too loud, Do not sit like that, Do not walk like that, Do not talk like that, All of this trouble for who? The family that the girl will be married into in the future. It’s almost as if, we were never taught to live for ourselves, but for certain people. For people regarding whom there doesn’t exist any assurance as to whether they shall like us or not, accept us or not.
One might think to one’s self,
“Isra, you’re being too harsh, trust me, it’s not that bad. Marriage is not that scary.”
And I would agree, marriage is not that scary, but it isn’t that magnificent either. And it is certainly, not something we must bend our reality around. Marriage is not where your life ends, it is not the final goal.
Ambition is rewarded for so long as it’s limited. Independence is praised for so long as it’s temporary.
Your identity as a woman, is constructed around you being a daughter, wife, mother. It will be absolutely daunting to realise you never really knew yourself at all by the end of it. The wretchedness of it all is, that our mothers and grandmothers and their mothers, who teach you this growing up, do not do so with malice in their heart, but with the desire of “helping” you live a life blending into society, for that is all they’ve ever known as well.
So now, instead of asking yourself, “What if this is all I know?” ask yourself “What more can I know, what more can I learn, and what more can I experience?” For the presence of self, is a one-time experience.
