unfettered thoughts

everytime i settle down in my skin and start to feel safe, kolkata reminds me that women are never safe. ever. anywhere.

I have been staying in my place for four years now. it’s like 10 minutes of walk from Ranikuthi. a place i have felt relatively safer to navigate. i see other trans women and queer couples here in public, late night walks are serene and uneventful, often i finish my work and walk back home at around 1 am at night and never have i ever had to face any untoward behaviour except a few persistent offer for lifts from various men.

that changed this diwali. i didn’t get assaulted per se. but i didn’t feel safe. i didn’t feel carefree. i had to be alert and almost ran back to my apartment.

i got done with my work on 3rd at around 2 at night. i wasn’t worried about the time because these kinda times are normal for me. accounting for diwali i was expecting a little bit of life on the roads, and i wasn’t disappointed.

as i started walking back to my place, i started going through the learnings of the day and the task list for tomorrow. i was quite deep in thoughts so it took me a little while to realise two men on a sports bike had been circling me. they have been going in front of me, waiting for me to cross, and then slowly overtaking me and waiting patiently for me to come up and pass by again. i got more concerned once i started paying attention to what they were saying. it seemed the one driving was more excited and the pillion one was not. he had been busy texting. i could hear stuff like, “ki tight figure banra”, “mai gulo ki thatiye achhe, amaar haate fit hoye jaabe bol”, “oi pod ta ki dulchhe shala”, along with a little whistling, and making the bike growl and what not. last time they passed me before stopping their bike before a signal which was green, i heard one of them asked the other to ask me for a ride and i can sit in the middle of them two.

i missed having a cigarette in my hand. i’m not new to these comments. in most scenarios i pay no heed to them. but this is different, i’m alone, and i wouldn’t be able to do anything if they approached me. not like having a cigarette would solve the issue, but in my experience men prefers to not approach women who smoke openly for soliciting, they want us to smoke in the bedroom, not in public. i have previously made a habit of walking while smoking for precisely this reason.

before i could finish thinking what i would reply if they do become persistent about giving me a lift, one more bike with three more men came and joined them and an argument ensued. the bikers from the new bikes started hurling abuses to the driver of the first bike. “jekhani jabi sudhu magibaji”, “sobsomoye nongrami koraar dhanda”, “chup chaap onnoder disturb kora bondho kor, amader saathe chol.” the dude tried to say stuff like, “tora erokom keno korchhis? amar ta ami bujhe nebo”

at this point i crossed them, crossed the road, and was out of earshot. i couldn’t hear what they were talking about anymore. i know it was about me because i was the only woman in the road, there were a few more drunk uncles scattered around the road, minding their own business, drunk out of their mind. after i crossed the crossing, i have automatically started strutting, i couldn’t breathe, i couldn’t see anything around me anymore. i didn’t even realise when i started running, until the next day when a local neighbour asked me why i was running back home last night.

i wasn’t touched. i wasn’t slapped on my butt. i wasn’t dragged by my hand. i wasn’t felt up by groups of men. i wasn’t elbowed. which, in the four years i have been living in kolkata has happened multiple times except the year i shaved my head and became a shut in.

but i haven’t felt terror like this in years, since i got sexually assaulted in a taxi in last year february. i just couldn’t make it stop and get out. i felt helpless then as i felt utterly hopeless now. may be it is because of how things are right now. i think it’s kinda funny how if i die tomorrow on the road while sucking a dick or just because i chose to walk home at night, the people who would be in the forefront of the protests would be some of the people who had touched me up, or made me unwelcome in their space, or even actively tried to hamper my livelihood. i think it makes me lose hope in the world a bit. i think it makes me question all the work i am doing. and the absolute terror that i talk so much about this community, yet if something to happen to me at late night, almost no one would be available for help.

when i was doing the mental health workshop in chiang mai, i had a small breakdown in front of the facilitator as i was telling her how i am not built for the cities. when i got back to my home, all i could think about was how i can’t wait to run away from here. never to come back, never to talk to anyone i have known here, as i cried and cried and cried till it was almost morning.

you know, i tell myself it wasn’t as bad as some of the things i had to go through, they didn’t even touch me. it was just a possibility that thankfully didn’t come to pass. but for me and many like me, things like this will keep happening, and more often than not, more than we care to agree, or to accept ourselves, these possibilities will get realised and many of them will get escalated.

i’m tired. i’m honestly exhausted. i am at my wits end. i am lonely. i don’t got energy to write fun stuff. you all who are happy please go on write romantic stuff. i’m only gonna say what pops up in my head.

“অমর কাব্য তোমরা লিখিও বন্ধু যাহারা আছো সুখে”

‘you do realise you were raped, right?’ i didn’t want to answer. the question coming from someone almost a decade younger has better understanding of boundaries than i do. i knew they were right. but i didn’t want to answer. i knew the answer, i was just not ready to accept it. ‘i consented’, i said meekly.

he always had higher sex drive than me. but he always assured me that he would stop if i ever were uncomfortable. the first time someone did stop when i said no, i cried in their arms. it was years before i met him. i have times when i do not have sex at all. to me sex feels like a time pass that you do when there is not much else to do, and i always have things to do. and he was respectful at the beginning. he stopped when i said no, or i wasn’t in the mood. i took it as a sign that he is nice. i also felt bad. i knew he has higher drive than me, and me not being able to meet his needs has made me feel guilty about myself. what was my worth if i can’t give him everything he wanted from me? i loved him. i would have given my life for him.

first time it happened was in a party. he drank. i did not. i was trying to be off alcohol. he kept touching me in front of others, and i was uncomfortable. previously i have broken up with another partner who did this sober, in daytime, in cafes. this time i justified it by telling myself that he is drunk, he is at home, with me. i did say no, and he stopped for sometime, and then he said, he is sleepy, and whether i can accompany him to the bedroom and lie by him till he falls asleep. i agreed. he started undressing me as soon as i got in, and the door wasn’t even locked. i tried to stop but he said he can’t stop because i am so attractive. i did feel desired. so despite the fear that someone might just walk in on us and see me naked, i gave in. he went to sleep once he was done, and i laid awake with guilt.

he said sorry the next day. he also said he is hornier on alcohol and he also is hornier by the fact that he might get caught and it carried him away last night. but he loves me and can’t think of doing this with anyone but me. i thought to myself, that it is just one time then.

as he cut me off from my friends and kept telling others that they should contact him instead of me, i got more and more isolated. it was only him who was giving me validation and i felt grateful towards him. i would have done anything to keep him happy, to keep myself desirable to him.

he kept asking other people to the house, and as they were sleeping, more often than not, his hands would go inside my top. he would play with my boobs and eventually his hands would go down. he wanted me to wear skirts during bedtime. he said it provided easy access. i took it as a sign that he desires me badly. he got me skirts too, and i am always partial to skirts because they go spinny.

i said no multiple times. at the beginning he would stop, but with more time he just got more bold. i never wanted to have sex with someone present in the bed. so, i wanna be able to move freely, and i wanna be able to moan and make noise. i could do none of that. i also did not wanna have sex clothed, under sheets, and taking on his body weight, that was hot and sweaty and uncomfortable. but if i didn’t gave in, he wouldn’t stop. he kept doing it till 4 or 5 in the morning. i am the designated homemaker. i had to take care of the house, i had to drop off garbage, clean up. and i cant do that if i get to sleep at 5 am and wake up at 12 or 1 pm. so i gave in. it was over much quicker that way. i got to sleep early.

this turned into a ritual. he would invite people over. there would always be someone in the house, sleeping in the bed despite me crying begging to him to have alone time with him. he would invite others and tell me that they wanted to come and they need to be here. i have always struggled with my inability to say no. he knew this, and took complete advantage of that. this i got to know when i told my friends and they said they never asked to come beforehand, he always invited them. and if they wanted to talk to me, he would tell them i am not mentally well enough to have a conversation, i am depressed and overwhelmed. which i was, but i wanted to talk to people that came over to my house.

every night, for months on end, he would keep doing the same to me. if i initiated sex when we were alone, he would flat out refuse to. once he went out, and i put on sexy lingerie, lit up candles, and lied down on the bed like one of those french girls you want to paint. he walked in and burst into laughter. i have never felt that bad ever in my life, i could do nothing but cry, and he said he laughed because he did not expect to see me that way. now i know, at this point he has been cheating on me for months. when he went to mumbai a few months before, he stayed with this wannabe influencer who has been called out as a groomer before, and both of them sported hickies that were not there before. he told others that i gave him to them, but he wouldn’t sleep with me when we were alone, and it happened almost two weeks after he left for pune, even if i gave him hickies, they would have been gone by then.

yet, i liked to think i consented. but when i told my therapist this, they said, it doesn’t count because it was never an enthusiastic yes. i did not have the choice to say no, because saying no made things worse for me, so yeah, what my friends have been saying is right. i was raped. day in and day out, for months. by someone i loved and cared for deeply. and he didn’t see me as a human, but an object for his perverse desires. i do not know how that makes me feel. i do not want to believe i was raped, i do not want to believe an intimate partner was sexually violent towards me, abused me as he pleased, and abandoned me when his needs were met.

i gave him everything he wanted out of me, and i gave him space to heal, and even that wasn’t enough for him to love me. maybe i’ll never be enough for someone. i have been loyal, i have been subservient, i supported him when he had no work from my savings. and that wasn’t enough. i am never enough.

but it is okay, i can’t change the past. i do realise i am not dateable, i can give a lot of labour, but no one is willing to love me for it. so i’d do this labour for me, at least i can’t abandon myself even if i wanted to.

i have been following the case for a very long time, and to be honest the only reason the queer lawyer is not making any headroom in the court is frankly she is subpar as a lawyer. i’ll explain further.

Marriage is a social contract. but under capitalism, marriages are for producing labourers for the state. ensuring marriage rights makes queers eligible for being viewed as a family unit, and granting them certain social and economical advantages of being the model family. these advantages are generally things like wider social acceptance, and importantly, having a partner with whom you can have a joint account and share fiscal responsibilities.

regardless of marriages, in a partnership, regardless of gender identity this happens anyway. two people share a house, become emotionally dependent, and share fiscal responsibilities. if one of the partner is abusive and leaves after treating the relationship as transactional, instead of romantic, in a queer set up, there is no reparations for the one who has been left.

but this happens in cis-het relationships also. men leave. almost always the woman is left alone picking up the pieces. if the woman was a housewife without proper financial independence or safety nets, even if they were married, the wife almost always ends up with losing everything. if it is an intercaste marriage and if the upper caste man leaves, you know that the lower caste woman will never even have a lawyer that would be interested in winning the case for her, provided someone picks it up. as we have already seen, dalit lawyers do not even get hired, do you think a dalit woman will get justice if harassed by an upper caste? not really, if it did, casteist crimes would have gone down, and not up.

so the problem isn’t queer marriages, the problem is marriages itself. the current legalities do not support people without power. it ensures people with power can continue to hold on to it. and that has been the problem all along. something the lawyer is too inexperienced to understand, and not the right one to fight for it.

the current legal structure do not allow homemakers to seek reparations for the harm caused bu intimate partner violence. marital rape is not even considered a crime in a lot of cases. it is as if, post marriage, the person with less power and agency in the relationship are relegated to a post of providing free labour for the man, and the law also do not register their agency, bodily autonomy, and human rights.

asking for queer marriage without pointing out the issues is wrong. asking for marriage without asking for a redefinition of the structure of family and their association with internal power structure is asking for trouble. this will only make lives of marginalised queers even more unbearable.

that’s what i think anyway. i have known friends who have been divorced and left for nothing after giving decades of their lives for their men. they can’t get justice. there are legal ways, like a pre-nuptial agreement that any privileged person can use before the marriage to indulge in any kind of debauchery post marriage knowing that a divorce can’t really hurt them. something that was never brought up in the marriage issue.

not everyone is also humane. just like there are pedophile priests, there are also predatory queers. who feast on queers more marginalised than them. there are queers who seek out exclusively newly out queers to groom them. one of my daughters got groomed by a queer person recently who has a very high social capital in the local queer scene. there are also queers who behave like straight people and dilute the queer political cause.

legal marriage had been a cis-het thing. without understanding the pitfalls of it, getting into marriage is only going to bring misery. a lot of queers do not also go through the unlearning process of cis-het behaviours, and internalise the toxicity that they mete out to their intimate partner. more often than not even after being in a queer relationship, and being surrounded by community, this can make the homemaker alienated and lonely. legalising gay marriages won’t solve them.

i want you all to ask this question that what do you think marriage is? what do you think family is? you have seen your parents. do you really wanna live a life like them? are you questioning the internal power structure that each relationship brings, or are you still hung up on the social power structure of age and status? how can we live a life that rejects the notion of free labour and domestic responsibility for the homemakers? you spend most of your life in a home, if you can’t help your partner build a better home for you both, do you even see their sacrifices?

today in therapy i realised in my personal life i haven’t practiced what i preached. that has made me feel not being able to face my moral self. i have never expected myself to be in this side of the road. but now that i am, my path is clear. i need to learn to forgive myself for the mistakes i make, and i need to grapple with the fact that reality may not be what we think it is. but hey, i trust myself. i know i’ll get back on my feet. i know i will learn from my mistakes. and i have to be more open about my feelings and i need to share more with the world not to just affirm my own beliefs, but also see things in a way i was incapable of seeing owing to rose tinted glasses. that’s all.

there is this concept in philosophy called meta-knowledge.

it’s about the knowledge about the knowledge. what you know you know. what you know that you do not know. you also know what others need and you also know what you want to know.

sounds simple enough. but it isn’t. not all knowledge are necessary. you don’t need to know everything. if i had a partner and the partner cheated on me while being with me, even though that knowledge will give me closure or a sense of understanding, i do not think i will be mentally able to handle the confirmation. so yes, i would not need to know it.

but enough about what i do not need to. what do i need to know? i think all i need to know is about myself. i need to know who i am, when all of my identities are taken away. i want to know whether i am the person because i was born or i am the person because of the environment. i need to know about how my body works, and i need to know how can i have most control over my body. i need to know what emotions i am capable of having and how to navigate around those.

i know enough about others. i do not know enough about myself. why do i do the things i do. why do i think the things i do. why do i take decisions in certain way. why am i in a balanced emotional sense and see clearly when i am in a crisis.

see, this is the problem. i feel normal around crisis. i can make decisions clearly, i can think clearly, i can be more logical. but i can’t always be in crisis to access this mode. i need to be able to access this on call, anytime i need.

medicines help, i am on prozac, and i can do things i was not really able to. i can get off bed when i want to, i can just call and talk to people if i want to, i don’t feel as bad about my body image on meds. but meds also do not help. i do not intend to keep taking meds. i do not wanna be dependent on the meds.

i want this feeling to stay. i wanna be like regular people, function normally, function regularly. have a grasp on my emotions. make decisions in a clear and concise manner. if i had the means to make my ideas into reality, would foolish or lofty ideals stay that way? what is the price of knowing the path to execution?

for a long time i thought i am a hater. i complained about things. everything. i would pick fight with people. if you’re thinking me as an adult, no! me as a pre-teen.

i was full of questions. i wanted answers, if i didn’t get them i’d have a breakdown. but as i grew up, i soon realised adults do not have answers. not only that, most adults do not even wants to know. i have tried to see whether they know already so they don’t care, but that is not true. they just do not care about knowing.

i was also a problem child. food and sleep both were extremely deregulated for me. nobody in the village cared. it is normal, it gets okay when they’re an adult. takes time, for some it takes longer time.

i think neurodivergence is common in our villages, in that lifestyle, neurodivergent people always find their places. i mean, nobody really cares if the kid who goes with the goats to the meadows is autistic or not. that kid will be taken care of. if that’s all they can do, they will do that all their life. i think there is safety in that lifestyle. safety some neurodivergent people badly seek. something i desperately seek.

this however did not fit with an urban lifestyle. so i struggled. i had to wake up early. my grandma would shout for waking up at 8, but here i had to wake up at 6 or so. we went to sleep by 10 pm.

when i went to the hostel, i had some amazing teachers. but i had a problem with authority. i would reject whatever they taught and i wrote whatever i thought of the works. write how this name is perfect for the story: and i would write how it is far from perfect. this was never punished, but encouraged. even if i wrote shit stuff. this got quite a bit of attention and i got to participate in shit like recitation, oratory, theatre etc.

however, in 2007 i got outed as gay in front of the whole junior high. that made me not get selected for these events. and others would come over to my bed at night, regardless of i’m sleeping or not. i even got a very bad case eczema owing to this. i was so out of my fucking mind, i would put salicylic acid all over my genitals and later peel the burnt skin off. it didn’t prevent anything, just the itching.

i hated myself too. i embodied the hater. this hatred stayed with me. i was not a good fighter, i can’t fight, but i learnt to hurt people with my words. and i got very good at it.

i did get a lot of creative freedom here. not all directors would allow someone with my surname to be cast, so i learned technical things of the theatre at this point. light, audio, etc. i made wall magazines, i made audio dramas before podcasts were cool. back in 2008/2009.

i returned home one month into class ten with my parents. my mother had a surgery. i handled all homemaking and also caregiving for others in this time. we eventually got a cook, but that cook was so bad, we had to cook anyway. it is at this point i started learning cooking, feeding, taking care of a bed-ridden person. something that i had to do again for my grandfather in class 12 again. he needed intense physiotherapy. we used bricks as weight for that shoulder pull.

home was full of hatred. i have tried to run away, i have been put on meds to force puberty out of me, i was having an emo phase and smoking black cigarettes in the bathroom. we had constant fights. it is at this point i got very badly manipulated by a married woman. my parents got to know, they blamed me, and took away any access to phones and computers. i was using my father’s nokia, mostly for songs and videos. but yeah. i wanted to apply to isi calcutta. she said she’s a professor, who knew people. anyway, this woman would play with my time and make me question my worth. i did not know what boundaries are, i experienced things i never thought was possible. no one prepared me for that. it felt like hell.

i went to college as hater but without boundaries. i did not care about interpersonal boundaries, but i was snarkier. i’d insult people and they wouldn’t even realise. but college was another kinda hell. in my previous schools, they have discriminated against me, yes, but they didn’t fuck up with the marks. college did. i haven’t really faced discrimination like this before. it took years to realise what was going on.

nobody told me about sc-st-obc-general categories. nobody prepared me for anti caste atrocities. nobody prepared me how colleges are hell for both queer and neurodivergent people.

i got assaulted two weeks into the first semester in a room full of people. some dude came and kept grinding on me and wouldn’t leave me alone. i got assaulted more later, but that’s after i came out as a tranny.

i hated here also, questioned authority, tried to went out of the prescribed notion, and i was promptly punished. it was not that i was ever wrong, to be honest, my profs preferred me early for external no-mark reviews because that would generally be praised, yet i kept receiving the lowest marks in the class. snarky wasn’t helping me. they didn’t get it in the first place. i started asking for answers and eventually write a letter asking to show reason, and that’s when i’m told i'll never be allowed to pass here.

i tried to fight, but i wasn’t prepared. my shit has been stolen before, i was jobless. i had to quit uni, went back home, get support from parents. they unwillingly provided, but that soured our relationship further. me coming out as a tranny didn’t have much effect. i did some work, and then left before the pandemic.

just before the pandemic i got into a relationship with this person who only wanted to keep me as an entertainment. the token tranny. it was a roller coaster. he broke up with me and hooked up with this then cis person who was transphobic towards me.

that fucked me up. but it is then i decided i will love. when i came out as non binary in 2017, i had a hoe phase that ended with surprise surprise, assault again. but i met some wonderful people with big hearts. it is then i decided to be kinder. but in 2020 i realised i love people by caring for them. that is how i love. that is the only way i know how to love. i also give my body. as a token of my love. i do not know what else to do.

so i decided i will give love. i have the capacity to. i do not wanna love one person as a partner, but i wanna share my love, in different ways, via different connections. i of course want a partner and i knew i would devote to them.

i know how to take care of others. i don’t know how to take care of myself. but that is okay. i will learn. i am only 29.

my love is mine to give. my hate is consuming. i want to learn to love myself so that the hate doesn’t come out all the time i feel threatened.

i am running on autopilot. i don’t recognise my body. i don’t know what is going on with me. i don’t know what i feel. everything is jumbled in my head. i don’t remember events unless i try really really hard. all memories from the last couple years seem fuzzy.

i have been tired as long as i can remember. i couldn't sleep as child, as a teen, as an adult. i couldn’t eat, i couldn’t do a lot of things. but i could recite whole books from memory by age two even before learning to read, which meant the people around me took it as amusement rather than a sign of lack of development. i had so much issues that are so clearly neurodivergent. i spoke too soon getting out in the world, i had issues with food, took my mother a few hours to feed me anything. i wouldn’t sleep at time, i would stay up all night. i wouldn’t allow touches. so much so that i would even cry and kick people if i was transferred to someone else. i didn’t try to run away from my parents always tho. however, i hated their touches as well, eventually i deeply hated touches from my parents also. to show affection, they’d often hug me or cuddle me without any notice and that made hella uncomfortable. so much so that sometimes i get that flashback in relationships. trust me it’s not fun. i don’t know how to talk about that. i wanna be touched by my partner, but i can’t tell them certain touches reminds me of certain things i am not so proud about?

i sure have adhd. i can never keep attention. like as a kid i got marks deducted from papers solely for “silly mistakes” teachers kept saying if i only paid more attention. but i’m literally unable to. i can’t control it. i have learned to pay more attention to things, but i still get distracted.

i think adhd makes me more tired. it is like the brain is constantly on work. i am trying to get to a routine so that some of the work gets automated, and i do not have to worry about those maybe. that is why i want a routine badly. i am already doing things on autopilot but they’re not predefined. i want to do regular tasks that i need to do daily to be automated.

but yeah, i’m burnt out. i have been taking care of others for some time now. my house had been full with people. i didn’t have to always cook for them, but i absolutely had to clean up after them. also, i do not like touches, a 2 bhk full with 7-8 people means touches are inevitable. i didn’t have space for relaxing or my own privacy.

privacy is a huge issue in my life. i have never had any. in the village i share the bedroom with grandparents/parents/cousins. with my parents, i shared it with my younger brother. i have lived all my life in hostel, and people would come over to my bed at night to force themselves on me. i crave for privacy. i want closed doors. i can’t share bed with anyone but the person i trust. i DO NOT wanna share my bed. it makes me uncomfortable, vulnerable, and i feel like i can’t breathe. i do not wanna share the house also. I am never gonna get unknown roommates. i don’t trust people.

you know, people call me a genius. i don’t think that’s true though. i feel everyone sees what they want to see. i do catch information and process them faster, but that’s mainly because i used to be a voracious reader so i read a lot of books and i can just connect the topics. to people it seems like a huge thing, but i feel this comes natural to everyone. idk, i’m just making connections between things. but people wouldn’t leave me alone. they just assume i know things. and if i do not know, it gets stressful. i do not want that. i can’t know everything. that is not possible. to be honest there are things i actively try to not know. not all knowledge is necessary. sometimes ignorance is great.

i have been taking care of people as long as i can remember. i have been managing home since fifteen years old. i can make perfectly round rotis, and amazing alu-posto. no one in our house cooks khichudi as good as me. i can help people with their work, i don’t have a degree, but trust me i can just learn how to do your work, and help you out. i can hold conversations in any topic, i can clean, i can get your friends snacks, i can mix amazing cocktails. i can pack really efficiently, i can fold clothes, make bed, i can do all homemaking stuff. and i offer it for everyone i love.

i am not complaining. i want to do this. i want to care for people i love. i just wish that you see me. you see me doing all the labour. all this service for you so that you don’t have to. i want to take up on the mundane so you can focus on doing what you do best. all i wish is that you come back to me, put your arm around me and put my head on your shoulder and tell me how much you appreciate me for taking care of the small things. but that never happens, ever.

like homemaking is a huge chunk of work. you spend most of your time in your home. homemaking is the primary job there. we need to keep our houses a favourable environment for us. even on a depressed lonely day with low productivity, it is at least two to three hours worth of work to manage a home. a well running home with everything organised and cleaned with multiple meals is whole days worth of work. and there is literally no vacation. i have been talking to fellow homemakers, and all of us are complaining about not being seen for the work we do.

i feel this is not done. we make homes a loving home, we make homes a safe space for you to heal. we provide unconditional support when external stressors affect you. we want appreciation, validation, we want to be seen. for the silent labour we put in our homes. we don’t want our love’s labour to be taken for granted.

this year, i couldn’t fall asleep even if i tried very hard. i was exhausted, yet i would stay up for 28-30 hours non stop. i couldn’t sleep. my shoulders would get numb and i couldn’t move them. it felt like millions of needles piercing my joints, yet i couldn’t sleep.

i now know that i was burnt out. i still am. i still am struggling to sleep. i have nothing to give anymore, i am completely empty. my brain is blank most of the times. sometimes i do not even recognise what my body parts are doing. sometimes i do some things and then i take note of what exactly i did. i say things and i don’t even understand what i meant. life has become reactionary. instead of planning beforehand what to do, i am waiting for things to happen to react to that.

i have been fulfilling other people’s needs so much they have started expecting things from me that violate my personal boundaries. i feel like i have turned into a doormat for other people who just demand care and withhold love if i’m unable to meet it. i have felt so lonely managing everything and not having anyone to talk to, i feel like i’m going mad. i am tired of always standing on the edge of a cliff and be feared of messing up.

i want attention. i don’t wanna be a silent worker. if i do work for you and you don’t appreciate it, it makes me feel small, like you expect me to do it anyway, like what ever i had or wanted doesn’t matter. i exist for your work only. i hate that. i want you to see me, i want you to see the small things i do for you.

i would like to rest. i can’t go on anymore. i’d like to take a pause. i would like you to take care of me, but if you can’t, i understand. my purpose in your life is over now.

i want my partner to be here. i want my partner to tell me, “i see you, you can rest now, i can manage things” but that will never happen. i want to be babied, fed in the bed, taken care of, to be read stories to, kissed on the spine, and lots and lots of cuddle with his body weight on me. i want him to love me, kiss my forehead, wipe my tears and tell me he won’t abandon me just because i am difficult to love right now. i want him to squeeze me as i squirm to get out of his touch while secretly wishing it never ends.

is it too much to ask to be taken care of?

am i a man or a woman?

neither. gender is a social construct based on the roles people fulfil in a society. more like a ceo or a cfo in a company. the social role i see myself fulfil is of a homemaker. i am boudi. the hot wife of your elder brother in a bengali para. you can watch but you can’t touch. and i’ll be like your second mother to whom you can talk about the life you don’t tell your mother to.

so what have i got inside my pants?

regrets, pieces of a letter i’ll never post, kaalboishaakhi, hopefully a knife.

like am i amab or afab?

if you have to use medical/therapy language to know what genitals i have, then i wish death upon you.

what is my old name?

oh you mean my legal name? that’s between me, the government, and the banks. need to use an alias for those. can’t trust the government.

you meant my real name?

depends on who you ask.

do i have a penis?

questions are $100, flashings are $250 with a signed consent form.

do i have a vagina?

questions are $100, flashings are $250 with a signed consent form.

when did i know i am trans?

i think if your individual experience, expression, and expectations do not match with what society dictates you to have, then you are trans.

in that way i knew i am trans as long as i had sense. always wanted to have boobs. i think they’re magical. like you can lie down on one, and your worries will go away. also, boobs look funny. but are also soft stressballs that fit in your hands. i want them so bad. i didn’t have the language to express. or the courage.

when did i come out then?

from where?

the closet?

you do know narnia isn’t real, right? it’s a story.

oh you meant when i told the world?

i don’t remember, facebook deleted my account.

so do i know deadname because they’re also like me?

never heard that name in my life.

was i born in the wrong body?

no, just the wrong century.

what do i mean?

body dysphoria is a result of white patriarchal beauty standards

how do i have sex?

ideally under someone, on a bed. but i’m generally open to other positions and places if i like my partner.

you think i’ll never be a real man/woman?

you know there are these dogs, that are very possessive of their toys, because that’s what they had from their birth. there are other options, but they only want that specific toy. if their master gets them a new toy, they bark and throw it away, even though it was more ideal for them, they’d stick with the old torn destroyed toys. and then there are some people who’d go like: “awww so cute”. no ma’am that’s unhealthy attachment.

it’s probably a phase?

absolutely, i’m hoping it catches on. do you wanna join? we have better fashion sense.

you always wanted to fuck a tranny?

no babe, you actually wanted to get fucked by a tranny. bent over. here is some ketamine.

do you have to pay me for sex?

tips are always appreciated. why get disappointed for free?

what do i do?

stay delulu 24*7

am i attracted to you?

you should buy a mirror to avoid embarrassing yourself in the future.

how do i pee?

sitting down. only uncivilised barbarians pee standing.

but trans women shouldn’t be in sport?

i thought the purpose of sports was to reach the peak human physical potential. i personally think gender division in sports is dumb. all humans should be clumped together. what’s the use of having two bests in two categories?

am i xx or xy?

hopefully xxxy. i’ll get paid to get researched on myself then. idk need to get a burr body test done that i have been postponing forever.

might add more later idk

my ex-partner thinks i’m asexual. i disagree. he says asexual people can want to have sex. i do agree with that. but i don’t feel i am. does that make sense?

he says people who do not consider sex as something to be ticked off the list is asexual. in that way, maybe i am. i feel sex gets way too much value, in reality it’s a pretty nice experience. it’s like a game. you can play single player, co-operative, or multiplayer. it is entertaining, and it passes the time really really well. it is also quite a lot of exercise to be honest, quite tiring, hunger inducing exercise. but honestly, there are better highs. and i’m not talking about just heroin.

i feel in that regard love is like a book. i don’t think love is an inherent emotion. i think love is a learned emotion. however, it is deregulated, as in we cannot control when to fall in love and when fall out of. however a lot of that love is just infatuation. infatuation of new information.

say you picked up the book based on public demand or reviews or maybe even the cover, but as you delve deeper into the stories, your infatuation grows. if it engulfs you, you can’t even put it down. but it does come to an end. it can come at the end or even abruptly in the middle as well. i couldn’t read the witcher books beyond couple chapters because it was triggering for me. so my infatuation died. But i have read lord of the rings in three days. and my infatuation with it ended as soon as it ended.

but here is the thing; by the time i finished lord of the rings, i knew i wanted to keep this book forever with me. so, i feel that’s when my love started. which meant caring for the book, keeping it safe, taking the characters and creating my own world with them, talking to other fans, and seeing their worlds, writing fanfics, by delving deeper into the lore and engaging and by figuring out new things i learned to love it in a new way.

I learned to love the book through reading and took active care to keep my love sustained. i am always happy to talk about lord of the rings. i carry the story with me in my heart. i can’t indulge in it much, but that’s okay. the love doesn’t go away.

i can read the book again and again. i can now do it in one and half days on bad days, one day in a good day. but that’s besides the point. i can never feel the same gratification i had when i first read the books. but i had a lot of fun with new things that came out, like the movies. or the book sequences. new stories, same world.

loving humans are kinda like that. first you have the infatuation. you have the butterflies in your stomach. you wanna know more about each other and spend all your time together.

but it ends. once you get to know the person in all entirety you can’t be infatuated anymore. the butterflies end, you can try to do things you did with them again and again, but it will feel boring and you’ll question whether it is worth it. which means, now you need to learn how to love that person. now their story has ended. now it’s time to start your own together. you write that story with each other. what you do not know you ask, what you know you share. you learn to take care, learn to be vulnerable, learn to handle attachment, learn to do things together. by talking and doing things you know each other, being loved is being known. when you’re known and they love you still, they’re a keeper.

and it is not true just for romantic love, if you want to build a life surrounded by people who love you in different capacities, you have to be known. you’ll be known to different people in different roles, but they’d love you nonetheless, in their different capacities.

what happens when you also figure this out as well? i don’t know. i have never been there. i am still trying to be known. i want someone to do the hard work of learning to love me. i want to be seen by my lover. i want to not be necessarily understood, but to see him try again and again. i want stability, i want constancy.

i am tired of people leaving when things get harder. i’m tired of people giving up because this now takes additional work. i’m tired of people doing shitty things to get out of things because they can’t be bothered to learn. everyone wants to chase the high. i’m tired of it.

i don’t want promises. i want to see effort. i want to see work. i don’t want minced words. i want clarity. i want boundaries. i want security. anyway, guess too much to ask.

somedays i just feel so lonely. i have so so much to say but i am always worried i will not be understood.

this fear of not being understood drives me crazy. i wanna say things, i wanna shout things from the rooftop, i wanna whisper things to my husband’s ears lying on his chest. or just break down sharing things without being worried about how i will be seen.

i want to be seen, as me, the helpless, baby me. i can do things yes, but i also can not do things most others can. i do not want that part to be ignored or worried about. i want it to be accepted, as me. it changes nothing about who i am.

but i can’t share. i can’t. i don’t know what stops me. maybe the fear of how i’ll be perceived. maybe the fear that people won’t love me anymore once they see me. the real me. the me that i am when nobody is seeing. me all by myself, me in my broken, cobbled together, imperfect self. may be that’s why i can’t share. or maybe it just dredges up way too much unsavoru memory that i have locked up long ago, told myself that they don’t define me anymore and moved on. maybe it’s just the fear that i am not the person i project out to be, and the person i do not project is too much for anyone to handle. what then?

i also don’t wanna be the weird one living alone with the cats at the edge of the village. it might sound romantic but from my personal experience, that is a quite lonely existence. i would not feel alive not surrounded by my loved ones.

may be that’s why i carry on doing what i do. maybe that’s why i can’t say things i wanna say. i don’t wanna be left out. i want to be there, smiling and serving food to the family gathering. maybe i’ll tell the stories later. or not. time will tell.

i am a town. you don’t need to know my name. i’m sure you have heard of it in passing, may be even came over and hated every bit of it. but it doesn’t really matter, unless you are sick. so sick from all the pollution and toxicity of your city life that your doctor says to you that you need to change the city for some time. and you ask back that you thought it was for old timey people and for people in the past, but your doctor assures you that it is very real and you have to get out of the city to survive.

then you start researching about wellness centres and destination travel, and eventually you come across me and something clicks. there has been at least someone in your life who have mentioned me to you, and you decide to come over.

you love me. you get to explore my different parts with a slowness you never knew could be possible. you roam around my main street, browsing books in the library or trinkets in the commercial district. you can watch movies in the cinema hall or watch plays in the theatre across. there is grass here and that is greener here. you can’t believe what you are seeing while exploring many of my secrets in sultry afternoon you have whispered in my ears how you are never going to leave me, how you are moving back here so you can be with me forever. stay here, take up work here. or maybe you just wanna plough me all day in your small patch. you think i’m fertile and you can grow gold. but all of those are talks. maybe bravado of a hopeful soul who just found out living like this was a possibility? i have freed you and you haven’t realised what this freedom entailed yet? in a way i think that is my fault. i have schools and colleges, but you came here to heal, not get educated. but i am bad at communication anyway, kids from my town often choose other colleges anyway. i doubt you’d like them either.

eventually you do get a grasp of things. collect yourself. sometimes it takes three months, sometimes three years. but eventually you leave. go back to the same city or to a different one. healed and ready to face the world. you promise me that you’ll come back and that you have to leave because the world is different and i won’t understand, how could i? i am already here and people here don’t wanna put up with me. i have become the mistress you won’t talk about to others. maybe your friends are now relieved that you don’t blast the daily chat about how moving to this town will solve all their life problems.

maybe you will come back from time to time, between your other affairs. and you know i’ll be here waiting for you. i can’t move on silly, i’m a town.