When I was a kid, I used to hide my heart under the pillow because my mother used to say, “If you don’t hide it well enough, someone’s going to break it.” It’s quite safe to say that under the pillow is not a very good hiding spot because I’ve been shot down so many times that I have altitude sickness just for standing up for myself.
Yes, that is what they say ‘ Stand Up For Yourself’ but do you know how hard it is to do that when you don’t even know who you are, you’re supposed to know who you are from such a young age and if we don’t they will, fat, ugly,gay,short. Ask me, I’ve heard of it.
When I was a kid I had this fascination with trimming my nails. Now? Not so much.
When I was eight I wanted to be princess. When I was ten I thought that I was very ugly because my parents never had time for me and who has time for an ugly child like me? When I was twelve I thought that I was completely useless only because everyone said so. When I was fourteen I felt like I was dead inside because I was sexually abused and I had no friends. I am sixteen years old and the one thing I want in life is to die.
Not before being a writer that is, and when I said this to someone their initial reaction was, “Be more realistic.” So I said, “Professional writer?” then they replied, “Don’t be stupid!”
See, they ask me what I want to be then tell me what not to be. I mean sure, my dreams are sad, they’re depressed, they’re pathetic but at the end they are my dreams. They can’t be dismissed that easily. But what better way to dismiss a dream than to find another dream and follow it. Poetry. I remember the very first poem that I had written. It was last year of a heart-break that I had about someone-leaving-me-for-someone-else.The first line was,” I loved him not for the way he was but for the way he is for her.” Sobby, I know.
See, that boy, he made me degrade myself. And I am not the only one here; they make us degrade ourselves. They make us feel useless, unworthy, unloved. They force us to believe that we are supposed to grow up all alone. I mean I also had friends until of course I realised what they talk about me behind my back.And some people have the audacity to say ‘Get over it’ as if depression can be cured with just mere words or a first aid kit because I’m trying; I’m trying so hard and failing equally.
I’m a freak. I’m the freak that you see in the circus, I’m the freak that you point at and laugh. I’m the freak that has to take pills to be happy, pills to breathe. But you know what? When you all are asleep I am the one who has to walk on the tightrope, we are the ones who have to walk on the tightrope. And some of us fall and some of us don’t make it.
But I am here standing today to tell the ones who didn’t make it. You don’t think you’re beautiful? Buy another mirror, take a closer look, stare a little longer because you are so, so beautiful. And strong. Oh wait, you don’t think you’re strong?
Think of all those times you had only one thought on your mind ‘O God, please, please kill me now!’ and all those nights you were contemplating how you wanted your family to find your dead body. Your father opening your bedroom door to see you hanging from the ceiling, your mother banging open the washroom door to see you lying in a pool of your own blood and your brother trying to wake you up one morning like ‘Nikki!Please wake up!’ but then you don’t. And even after all that, you wake up and you breathe. Sometimes just breathing and starting a new day is the bravest thing to do.
Don’t look behind; don’t look at the future, look at me. If an average girl like me, an average girl like Nikki Gautan can do it then so can you. Because there is something, something inside of you that have made you to keep moving forward after everything you’ve been through. You are strong and brave!
You are beautiful, you are kind, you are worth it and you are everything you’ve always wanted to be. And you deserve it.
-nn
0’16
