I don't know what exactly was it that made my friends and parents think i was a strong woman. Come strife, come tribulation's and i found people around me reiterating that 'come on you are a strong woman, you can handle it'. And i knew it was not one of those things that you say to people to encourage them or make them hopeful. They really believed i was strong and that i could take it. I hope it had nothing to do with my physical appearance ;) joke apart.....there came a time when it almost became a burden - to be strong. I remember crying on deepty's shoulder's and saying 'i am tired of being Strong.
Friends faced problems and they turned to me for strength and support, my family looks my way when they need someone to be strong and stable and steady. I was strong for all of them, for my mother, my friends, my father, for the man in my life (then)...and for myself. Somewhere down the line being strong became a part of my own defination of myself!!!
Perhaps it was the realization that i had changed in many ways or perhaps it was the situations that i found myself in which nugged me and told me that i wasnt strong. Or i had ceased to be so even if i was at a particular point of time. I have a weak mind, a mind that falters, qiwers, fears and is insecure, unsure, vulnerable, lacks confidence, belief, trust.....basically a mind that is so negative and sensitive. When you keep throwing hot boiling water on wood thinking that 'its wood, its not going to affect it' and you keep at it, keep assualting it with the water, and slowly you begin to see the rust, the way the bark has turned softer, soggier.....thats what happened with me i guess.
I was 22 when i stood in the middle of a street with huge trees on both the sides and felt my world falling apart. I never believed in God, but i believed in the man i loved, i trusted him the way a man with complete faith trusts god. I am not saying he was God for me, but he was my belief, all that was good in the world, all that was pure, honest......and at 22 in a matter of a few seconds all of it left me....ALL of it. I coped with it, came out of it and was perfectly fine. I didnt loose my faith in life, in people, in love.....i loved life and i laughed like a child. Today i am happier than i ever remember being. I have all that i could have asked for, wished for. Parents who love me and protect me, a brother who fights with me but does little little things that say more than words could ever, friends who have stood by me all along and are still there rock solid and a man who asks me to be myself, whatever the price....who makes me want to believe in myself, in everything that i did earlier, who loves me but cant say it.... and whom i love more than i have ever loved anyone. And it is for him that i started looking for, hunting for things that i wanted to give him...things that i thought were hidden in me...my belief, my faith, my strength...my conviction...everything...and i searched and searched...and found emptiness..!!
Experiences that we have in life either make us or break us....mine sustained me, i was intact...or so i thought, it is only now that i see the places that i have been broken in...I live inside a mind that i dont know, that i cant identify with. Neel says knowing yourself is not a destination that you have to reach, its a process and now i know just how painful the process can be.
I derive my strength from Prashit, he may not know it or not be aware of just how much of a support he is to me or of the impact he has had on me or my life, but talking to him or being with him makes me feel loved, cared for, protected, strong, hopeful, happy....all the things that i am empty of.....he's my recharge!!!
