"can i cry now?"

"can i cry now?"

in one of my favorite animated movies, "i want to eat your pancreas", the guy asks the mother of the girl who he fell for—who had passed away due to some illness or an accident (i forgot)—can i cry now? the mother of the girl says yes, and he lets out the tears he had been holding all while he was paying his respects to her shrine. he cries, and cries. he grieves. he mourns the loss of a lover. of a girl who lit up his monotonous life. of a girl who filled his days with something to look forward to. of a girl whose presence brought him peace and joy.

i'm not sure where i'm going with this, but remembering that scene, i kinda started thinking "how nice. he can grieve. he has the permission to cry", though he held it in for quite a while at first. i guess i feel envious of him. because he got the permission to grieve. and i don't.

living in an indian household, the members of which are all deeply traumatised, you barely get to cry. especially when there's no space for you to. you can't even hide it because everyone's always there. they're always watching. reminding you of your attempts which you failed at. making sure you know how much they've invested in you. feeding into you that you have to make it because they couldn't. and if you don't, then you have nowhere to go either. there's nothing you can do except for taking it all in. you were the one who failed, so you gotta bear the burden of your meaningless endeavours yourself too, since you were an investment which just brought loss to the family. why should you be allowed to cry? why should you be allowed to feel sad? you don't have any right to feel despondent or dejected. not when there are others who have suffered, and continue to suffer more than you do or ever have. sadness then becomes irrelevant. if they notice you looking gloomy, they'll blame it on your own weakness and incompetence. if they see you trying to cope, they'll question your ways of doing so. if you fall sick, they'll blame you for not taking better care of yourself and list how many things they've provided for you mostly always at your service. it's your fault for not listening to them. it's your fault for drinking cold water, for not eating healthier, for becoming a burden on the rest of them.

my younger brother calls me a "liability". because there was some amount of money that was invested in me, so that i could then earn more money, and i have been failing at doing that as of now. he's correct about it. i know he is. but that fact alone is enough to bring back all my incapabilities and shortcomings to my mind. i want to go tell my parents to not invest in me anymore, for the burden of expectations is eating me alive. but it's no use. it's not like i can bring back those resources anymore. i can't take those decisions back. so i just laugh whenever he points out my unwillingness to change. i just laugh when he calls me names, and reminds me that thanks to my failures, the amount of resources invested in him are lower. i can't help but agree in my mind. he'd have utilised everything perfectly.

i feel defeated when i'm reminded of how i failed because it was constantly etched into me how i am nothing but a failure.

it puzzles me sometimes. where did i go wrong? i scored great marks, was always either first or second in my classes. i was a creative child. i even got the first place in abacus at one point of time. i could sing, i could dance. i could draw, i could paint a little too. still, it was not enough. my external appearance gave away my uselessness, because all of this was for naught if i didn't look pretty too. their kind of pretty. all of this competence and curiosity went in vain, thanks to their voices in my ears telling me how i should lose weight, fix my hair, fix my skin, and only then will my achievements mount to something all the damn time. i wish i was saying this metaphorically. i have a lump in my throat as i'm writing this. i'm not letting this lump get to my eyes. my brother is right next to me, and my mother is having her lunch. to even think of crying here, or just having tears in my eyes, horrifies me. i guess that's how my inability to cry in front of someone came to be. i am inherently an emotional person. i feel, yes, but i don't let it show. i already know why to an extent, but the realisation doesn't make it any easier to not hate myself for everything i do and how i do it. and that makes me think how self-awareness can be such a curse.

i wish instead of hardening my core, these experiences could've made little siya to be kinder towards herself. if not anyone else, i wish at least i had been there for myself. but how could i not believe the words of numerous people? i was so young.