Sounds Like Selena
By Selena Ganguly
By Selena Ganguly
In my February column, I wrote about my experiences of being a woman and how we feel the need to prove ourselves. If I’m going to be honest, I have no clue what I was essentially trying to prove at the time. The more I kept on writing, the more I felt uneasy with myself.
I knew what to write about, but every time I wrote about my experience as a “woman” it felt like a punch in the gut. After it was officially published, it was the last nail in the coffin. Each puncture of the nails hammering down would slowly turn itself into the same unending broken phrase of, "just accept it, accept it, accept it, just accept it."
There were days I clenched my jaw with every “Ms. Selena” or “Ms. Ganguly” thrown my way. Swallowing the lump in my throat while being categorized as “a strong young woman” expected to accept the compliment with a smile. Sitting through my parents' praise of their so-called daughter, resisting every urge in my body from saying, “I’m not a girl and I’m okay with that because I feel happy. I finally feel happy.”
As time passed on I put myself through pain in order to favor people’s happiness in trade for my own misery— no more, I’m done and I’m sick of it.
I don’t owe anyone anything regardless of it being my gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or other parts of my identity. I could care less if people don’t accept me because my identity will never ever be used to cater towards your preferences over the cost of my own feelings. What you think I “should” be has no value to me at all, because the only one who can validate my identity will forever and always be me.
I do not have to explain my identity if people refuse to respect me. Nor does anyone else owe or explain anything of their identity, because it is for them to determine within themselves what makes them comfortable in their own skin, not for others to dictate.
This sense of freedom no longer feels like I have to conform to the idea of womanhood where certain aspects of my life were considered the epitome of “being a lady.” Stitching up the open wound where the name placed on my body didn’t have a connection to at all in my mind. Don’t have to juggle anymore between if I would be dehumanized for coming off as too masculine for my ethnic features in the Western eyes, while worrying if I would be scrutinized for being too feminine in the South Asian lense. At the end of the day, I’m just me and I can’t hide it.
There’s a common saying that our fate is written in the stars, but how is it able to write my fate if it barely knows who I am? The stars have only seen a portion of my life, but it will never be able to write my life as a whole of how my identity shaped overtime, since fate is only a conclusion of one’s destiny. The label I choose for myself simply can not conclude all of the experiences I’ve gone through discovering and accepting myself. But as long as I’m content with my identity, then that’s what matters to me the most of all.
Now that sounds like me.
I knew what to write about, but every time I wrote about my experience as a “woman” it felt like a punch in the gut. After it was officially published, it was the last nail in the coffin. Each puncture of the nails hammering down would slowly turn itself into the same unending broken phrase of, "just accept it, accept it, accept it, just accept it."
There were days I clenched my jaw with every “Ms. Selena” or “Ms. Ganguly” thrown my way. Swallowing the lump in my throat while being categorized as “a strong young woman” expected to accept the compliment with a smile. Sitting through my parents' praise of their so-called daughter, resisting every urge in my body from saying, “I’m not a girl and I’m okay with that because I feel happy. I finally feel happy.”
As time passed on I put myself through pain in order to favor people’s happiness in trade for my own misery— no more, I’m done and I’m sick of it.
I don’t owe anyone anything regardless of it being my gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or other parts of my identity. I could care less if people don’t accept me because my identity will never ever be used to cater towards your preferences over the cost of my own feelings. What you think I “should” be has no value to me at all, because the only one who can validate my identity will forever and always be me.
I do not have to explain my identity if people refuse to respect me. Nor does anyone else owe or explain anything of their identity, because it is for them to determine within themselves what makes them comfortable in their own skin, not for others to dictate.
This sense of freedom no longer feels like I have to conform to the idea of womanhood where certain aspects of my life were considered the epitome of “being a lady.” Stitching up the open wound where the name placed on my body didn’t have a connection to at all in my mind. Don’t have to juggle anymore between if I would be dehumanized for coming off as too masculine for my ethnic features in the Western eyes, while worrying if I would be scrutinized for being too feminine in the South Asian lense. At the end of the day, I’m just me and I can’t hide it.
There’s a common saying that our fate is written in the stars, but how is it able to write my fate if it barely knows who I am? The stars have only seen a portion of my life, but it will never be able to write my life as a whole of how my identity shaped overtime, since fate is only a conclusion of one’s destiny. The label I choose for myself simply can not conclude all of the experiences I’ve gone through discovering and accepting myself. But as long as I’m content with my identity, then that’s what matters to me the most of all.
Now that sounds like me.