my 15 year old cousin snitched on me and so now i will live life on my terms. for both of us.
living life fearlessly for her, for us
I’ve had an inkling of feelings that this was going to happen but I pushed it down and ignored it, which is honestly the quite opposite of what you should do. Always trust your gut, even if you don’t like what it’s telling you. I know it would happen without a doubt, but I wasn’t sure when. And I definitely didn’t think it would happen today of all days.
I finally had the house to myself after nearly a month and I was looking forward to alone time. I was desperately craving some silence and the solitude in its stillness. Just some tranquility to…think. Only to find myself dumbfounded and confronted by my mom while she was at her doctor’s appointment.
I couldn’t help but be silent on the phone. We were both quiet, only some rustling and murmurs from the room of patients while she stood in the hallway of the clinic. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t sure what to say.
“You promised me you wouldn’t post those pictures. I always told you that once you put them out there, you can’t take it back”, she said sternly. I shut my eyes, finding the silence in the apartment disturbing and relentless. Just a few moments ago, she confronted me about the, and I quote, “half-naked pictures that you posted on Instagram”. While it was obvious that it was my 15-year-old cousin that showed the images to her father, while getting high off the power trip of telling my mom, my mother still decided to cover its tracks and lie that it was an auntie that warned her about what her disobedient daughter was doing. Conveniently, it’s an auntie whom I’ve never met before with a daughter I never heard of.
I went to go shower because I thought by washing away the dirt, I would somehow magically rub whatever was happening away. But instead, the more I thought about it in the shower, the angrier I got. No, furious. How dare she, I huffed. How dare a CHILD violate my privacy? A child!! And how dare my uncle play telephone to my mother by snitching on me when he has never even contributed to raising me! I barely know the guy to begin with, I angrily said to myself. And why didn’t my mother defend me? Why isn’t anyone questioning a child for being so nosy and for being in my business?
When my mother came home from her appointment, she was quiet. Eerily quiet. But I felt like screaming. I wanted to cry so desperately but no tears would come out. Perhaps I was too furious to cry and my body didn’t know what to do with itself. Instead, I unleashed on my mother. Except I couldn’t gather my thoughts and all that came out was an erratic ramble making me look like a complete hysterical imbecil. In response, she blankly stared back at me and calmly said, “if you were smart, you would be stay silent about this and carry on.”
I know that in Bengali culture, she wasn’t necessarily insinuating that I was being stupid. What I should've done was to just be grateful for her silence since “other Bengali mothers” would let hell break loose. But I couldn't stay quiet. How can I when my privacy and validity were questioned? Or better yet, ignored?
For me, this was just yet another reminder of how little to no autonomy I have over myself. How I am yet a never-ending extension of my family. That I do not belong to myself.
[Read smoking at prospect park made me realize that i exist beyond the identity of a brown muslim daughter]
I went back to my room and slumped over my chair, suddenly feeling so detached from myself. It was as if my body was giving me notice that I am not my own. That the autonomy I once naively thought I had was gone. Or perhaps it wasn’t there in the first place. I thought of the last words my mother said before I reclused myself to my room. “I let you live your life and I just asked for one promise. You should be grateful that I give you even permission to do so. Other moms would never.” Permission? I thought. Permission to live life? Or permission to be…happy?
I suddenly thought of a quote from Charlotte Bronte’s book, Jane Eyre,
“I remembered that the real world was wide, and that a varied field of hopes and fears, of sensations and excitments, awaited those who had the courage to go forth into it's expanse, to seek real knowledge of life amidst it's perils.”
While this quote always provided me great comfort, it suddenly made me want to combust into flames from the inside out. I want to desperately touch and discover every inch of the world as it is so wide. To devour its entirety. But there’s this intangible transparent force that’s painfully pulling me away. The force is so immense and dense but I can’t grab it with my fingers or fight it off. It’s stubborn and exists to restrain me. to hold me back. While I cannot physically see the force, I feel its compounding dreadful depth. And I fucking hate it.
At first, I found myself in utter shock. I wasn’t sure what to think or even say to my mom. Then I started laughing at how ridiculous it all was. Did a 15-year-old really just snitch on me? I thought. For fucks sake, I’m 22! This is maddening! Then, embarrassment. Embarrassed at the fact that my family members were potentially looking at pictures of me in my bathing suit. Then slowly, it morphed into anger. A hot sizzling boiling ball of fury.
Fuck her fuck her fuck her, I screamed inside. I felt vengeful, laughing at my friend’s jokes who comforted me by saying she’ll get karma and will one day get what she deserved. But then found myself shaking my head, taking back what I was thinking.
I suddenly remembered a vivid memory of my cousin sitting on my leather sofa at our old house. She was a baby, sucking onto her chubby fingers, wearing a polka-dot green dress from Children’s Place. Her forehead was messily imprinted with kajal. I was sitting beside her as she playfully grabbed my braids. Little did I know that ten years from that moment, we would be here today.
I thought back to that vivid childhood memory, no longer feeling resentful but… disappointed. I realized that above all, I felt betrayed. I had believed that even though we only saw each other once every other year, we had a sense of comradeship. Allyship. A silent one. But I guess once again, I was being naive.
I started looking at the images of myself. My purple glittery dress revealed the middle of my breasts, my bikini exposing my stomach. I looked at them through her eyes and suddenly was in disbelief by the vulgarity and shock of the photos. The images represented everything she, or should I say both of us, was conditioned to think was disgusting. Sinful. Evil. Dishonorable.
I thought back to my 15-year-old self and realized we were not so different from each other. How I would laugh at the girls a few years older than me for taking off their hijab from the Mcdonalds and library blocks away from their house, changing into miniskirts before school, coining them as sluts. I would proudly plaster myself as “a good girl” who could do no wrong. But before I knew it, I was 18 years old with a life I found empty. I looked at the girls that relished in their youth and wondered what it was like taking every chance to risk their reputation for a small moment of pure intimacy, pleasure, and joy. What did I gain from judging them? What did I gain from staying home, watching them? I vowed myself to live life on my own terms, fully and mercilessly, and to never look back.
[Read love is a three-headed monster]
I see her now and I understand. How can I be mad at her when she is the product of the patriarchy that conditioned us to see femmes living boldly as dishonorable and a cauldron of sin. I wonder when will be the exact moment when she stops looking at us with disgust but a sense of pride? Or if it will ever happen at all. I will have to wait patiently and see. I will be rooting for her in the meantime.
But for now, I shall continue to live life on my own terms. For both of us.