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I don't know how stupid this sounds but I thi k I should say it anyway-if you're kind and empathetic instead of defensive, when someone tells you how you've been hurtful to them/their community, you actually make the world better for them.
If you show you're capable of change, you make the world safe for all of us. And I really wish I had been taught this with my classmates back when I was in school, instead of Bhagvad Gita. I don't want to understand war, tell me more about humanity, love and empathy.
I say this now because we recently shifted our house and I found slam books from my seventh and tenth standards. Seventh was when I was being bullied and had extremely low self-esteem. I see places where people were mean enough to say that I was 'kanjoos' without any context.
I remember the girl who wrote it and how she knew my mother didn't give me money. She didn't know it was because we didn't have enough. And I wish I could tell her then, without having to worry about how she will yield power over my parents' inability to afford their lifestyle.
And then I read what I wrote in my own slam book because I didn't have a diary but wanted to tell myself things. About how I don't deserve love and that's why my friends don't give it to me. I wish I had known better then. I wish my people know better now. I wish.
I go back into a corner and become a vulnerable girl who had nobody to talk to because everything bad felt deserving and everything good felt too good to be true and so I let it go. Because I thought I didn't deserve it. The fear of being picked over because I don't know things.
Now that I know some of those things,I realise what a huge transformation it has been for me,to be happy when I'm not picked,to be left alone and happy.I'm incredibly proud of myself.
But sometimes I think if I'm just overcompensating for not having received validation when I really needed it.
