To all the hurting women...

For a while now I’ve been trying to nurse a broken heart and suffice to say it has been a downhill battle: The drunken texts (for which there’s never a reply) the countless glasses of wine and endless nights out with my girlfriends trying to amputate and piece back together every detail of what went wrong and where.

Recently, on one of our ‘dismembering’ missions a fellow girlfriend told me her story of heartbreak. Suffice to say I wasn’t the only one trying to come to terms with my loss. Now when you’ve spent the past 3 months believing that your heart could not possibly be reduced to a finer pile of rubble, this sensation of course comes as a shock. When you’ve been so distracted by your own mess, looking up to find a landscape of bigger, uglier devastation than yours can be both startling and humbling.

In this spirit, I found myself talking to another dear friend of mine. I don’t wish to reveal her story but safe to say that she had given her heart out to someone and all she got back in return was pain and rejection. A few days later, another friend told me about her struggle with someone she was with for a long time, hoping she would spend the rest of her life with him, only to be told that he no longer saw her in the same light. That he had changed.

These are strong, intelligent, funny and beautiful women. Women who will someday run multinationals, save/affect the lives of others around them and still find time to have dinner on the table by 7.30pm.

These are women who will help their children with their homework, attend PTA’s, bake cupcakes for the class bake sale and still at the end of the day find time to do the laundry and pack for their husbands because he’s got an out of town business meeting the next day. And mind you, she will keep everything in mind, right down to his contact lens solution, his anti-acidity pills and his blue shirt because his eyes pop when he wears blue, because that’s just the sort of women they are. After all of that, these women will still find time for their sisters who need to talk late at night or their friends who need a shoulder to cry on.

You can hardly refer to us as normal. We are far from normal judging by the superhuman strength we posses to deal with all the hurdles being a daughter/wife/mother/sister/friend have to offer.

We are the women a handful of men decided they needed to bend us till breaking point before rejecting us. Somehow that doesn’t seem right to me at all. All though I am aware that some of these women chose to walk away from their partners, after much thought, I have arrived at the conclusion that their partners left them along time ago. Physically perhaps some of these women were strong enough to walk out, but I know for a fact, it was only because these men walked out emotionally a long time before they did.

I leave room of course for the “other side of the story” seeing that I don’t personally know some of these men, their inner conflicts and do not want to claim that I do. What I do know though is that so very few legitimate reasons exist to cause another person as much emotional pain as these women are feeling right now that most if not all of these men should be harboring some pretty deep shame and guilt for what they have done.

I have also come to the conclusion along with all these other exceptional women that there is no excuse, none at all, for a man not to fight for you. If you really want to be with someone, nothing in the world, whether good or bad, right or wrong, can or should stop you from being with the one you love. As women it is our prerogative for all that we give and all that we take, to have atleast, that; men that see us worthy enough to fight for us.

We were all told in some sense or the other that our expectations, and our ‘bubble worlds’ are too high-handed, too high-maintenance, ergo we constantly wanted something that was beyond ordinary. But let me ask you this, why not? We strive to be extraordinary everyday, live extraordinary lives and do extraordinary things, then why should our relationships be excused; because a man is too busy or too rational to deliver?

The degree to how fiercely a woman loves a man should be directly compensated with the kind of story she has with him. Maybe boys should, instead of sex-ed classes in school have a relationship-ed class. That way half our problems would be solved.

We women waste so much of our time trying to read books that help us tap into their mind-sets and figure them out but you never see the reverse. It just goes to prove how much we try. At every level we are constantly trying to understand and trying to communicate because we love them too much to lose them.

To these women…not all of you believe in a loving God, but I do and I believe that he hears and watches over you silently, in awe of how his girls have grown into such gorgeous independent women. He cannot take the trials away because its part of what keeps you growing and flourishing but he knows your pain and is with you.

And to these men…at best, you have lost out on a truly extraordinary female and at worst, metaphysical justice will be served for every tear and fear you caused to surface.

Thoughts and Opinions: Racist or Recessionist?

http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009/06/19/attacks-on-indians-in-australia-racist-or-recessionist/

A little perspective for women out there

Girls are taught a lot of stuff growing up: if a boy punches you he likes you, never try to trim your own bangs, and someday you will meet a wonderful guy and get your very own happy ending.

every movie we see, every story we're told implores us to wait for it: the third act twist, the unexpected declaration of love, the exception to the rule.

but sometimes we're so focused on finding our happy ending we don't learn how to read the signs. how to tell the ones who want us from the ones who don't, the ones who will stay and the ones who will leave. and maybe a happy ending doesn't include a guy,

maybe it's you, on your own, picking up the pieces and starting over, freeing yourself up for something better in the future. maybe the happy ending is just moving on.

or maybe the happy ending is this: knowing after all the unreturned phone calls and broken-hearts, through the blunders and misread signals, through all the pain and embarrassment... you never gave up hope.