In so many ways, I have reached an impasse in my life. It is an easy thing to be frank or honest with your friends, even easier to tear up a family member because they can take what you have dealt them all these years in fits and identity crises, but it is an entirely different challenge to be true, just, fair, open, trusting, and HONEST with your own self.
When Aesop and the Bible and Hammurabi said those things about the Golden Rule, and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", they did not factor into account that oftentimes we treat others with much more kindness and generosity than we ever treat ourselves.
I know that in every hard and stressful situation, I put my blinders on not unlike the horses in Montreal. I can only go charging full speed ahead, eating from my trough and occasionally taking a break to take inventory of my hardware and my bodily functions. It becomes hard to not only see the light and smell the roses, but I am so consumed by the apparent barren landscape and the loneliness, I assume I have failed and I have no support.
In this, I am woefully mistaken. But I am not alone in doing this. I know that in art and in life, every person becomes their own worst enemy. The comments our first and brightest well-wishers--our parents-- give us are sometimes the best and worst fuel for this self-consuming fire. I know that my parents love me, and they are probably even reading this right now: Hi, Amma! Hi Appa! But for the longest time, my brain couldn't reconcile its original decision-making with what it thought was best considering the inputs of my dear ol' mum and pop. Thanks to loads of soul-searching with a healthy 4-year dose of neuroscience, I have finally cracked that code, and realized my own selfish need to find my own voice. As corny and as "teenage-girl-empowerment -movie" as it may be ("Raise My Voice" and even "Break ke Baad"...kinda.), it is a cliche because it is undeniable fact.
So many of my desi peers, and even my general Asian peers, without even realizing it, have put their natural urges and talents to rest before they even sought to know their true potential. Not because their parents ever expressed a negative thought but because of the undue fear of what their parents might say if they ever came to know. It is not even the true fear that curbs these dreamers, but the unknown reaction.
We are practically programmed to know what our parents like, and because we like our parents back, the lot of us end up being parent pleasers with our careers--coming up with great pre-med hoaxes like "global medicine" and "health and humanity" to "theater...with a minor in computer science". Our need for their continued approval, both monetary and laudatory, is almost pathological with how much that need compounds with unnecessary parental pressures and negative self talk.
I don’t know about you, but my mom is the voice in my head whenever I think of taking risks professionally. She was the voice in my head that said, “Kutti, why would you publish this saying bad things about your family! Why don’t you love me?!” She is the one that would nag incessantly and lovingly about being a doctor and how that was her dream as a child, especially when she reflect so on growing up with her favorite uncle and her grandfather who were both physicians.
Being the eldest granddaughter of six, four of whom are my younger “cousin-sisters”, I was the hesitant standard-bearer. Ever ready, even over the summers we spent in India, if my one-year-my-junior cousin had learned anything I hadn’t, I was unyielding in my quest to meet the mark. When I was seven, my cousin had already learned cursive as it is standard in India to have joined-up writing. I was distraught, to say the least, and demanded my father for workbooks at once, please, so I could rectify these undue gaps in my knowledge.
I came back to school stateside quite pleased with myself, though my cursive writing was atrocious. I still held the lead. Over time, though we did not observe ranks like the Indian system, I kept my grades up and achieved the requisite accolades from the extended family. My immediate family always pushed me in the direction of my dreams, never batting an eye when I signed up for the school musical, or guitar lessons, or wanted to do poetry workshops in the middle of the summer.
When it came time to pick a major for college, I had all but dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on neuroscience, for it was my saving grace, my panacea, if you will. With Neuroscience, I was looking to kill all the birds with one stone. I was going to solve my familial woes, all neurological disorders everywhere, earn my Nobel, and simultaneously be really happy learning bits and pieces from every field imaginable! What could go wrong?
I had my stops and starts with my field of study, but when all was said and done, it allowed me the room I needed to learn and grow and come to terms with my family and my life. I learned to be a scientist through the explorations of how my thoughts came to pen. And I learned to be a better writer through my trials of penning those imaginings into words that spoke clearly. My neuroscience journey started at the age of twelve, and while it will never truly end, it came to its apex at the age of twenty-one. I am so grateful to have the privilege of calling myself a true neuroscientist now, amidst my mentors and my most admired heroes.
But to be honest, the one identity that I think I always deny myself of owning fully is that of a writer. To call thyself a writer comes with so much ridicule. We are all writers. We are all thinkers. What makes thou so special? Are you published? They ask. Oh, I write, too. But no one reads it. How many followers do you have? I reply, I write to exist. I write to feel and to process. I write because my mind grows restless with all the words, overflowing, like a babbling brook that turns into a waterfall that flows into a channel by the shore of an island, in the midst of an ugly, windy storm. I write because if I don’t, these words become caustic. They explode from within like a volcanic blast, lava oozing, and leaving all but destruction in its wake. I write because when I write, the world is no longer sideways and backwards, and seems to right itself again. I write because when I write, just the rhythm of the keys, creating my brain’s overdriven thoughts to pixels on a screen, creates this peaceful lull in my heart. I’m calm. Because I write.
So there. I have “come out of the closet”, so to speak.
I am a woman.
I am twenty-one.
I am heterosexual.
I am an ally to all.
I am South Asian.
I am a citizen of these United States of America.
And I am a writer.
When Aesop and the Bible and Hammurabi said those things about the Golden Rule, and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", they did not factor into account that oftentimes we treat others with much more kindness and generosity than we ever treat ourselves.
I know that in every hard and stressful situation, I put my blinders on not unlike the horses in Montreal. I can only go charging full speed ahead, eating from my trough and occasionally taking a break to take inventory of my hardware and my bodily functions. It becomes hard to not only see the light and smell the roses, but I am so consumed by the apparent barren landscape and the loneliness, I assume I have failed and I have no support.
In this, I am woefully mistaken. But I am not alone in doing this. I know that in art and in life, every person becomes their own worst enemy. The comments our first and brightest well-wishers--our parents-- give us are sometimes the best and worst fuel for this self-consuming fire. I know that my parents love me, and they are probably even reading this right now: Hi, Amma! Hi Appa! But for the longest time, my brain couldn't reconcile its original decision-making with what it thought was best considering the inputs of my dear ol' mum and pop. Thanks to loads of soul-searching with a healthy 4-year dose of neuroscience, I have finally cracked that code, and realized my own selfish need to find my own voice. As corny and as "teenage-girl-empowerment -movie" as it may be ("Raise My Voice" and even "Break ke Baad"...kinda.), it is a cliche because it is undeniable fact.
So many of my desi peers, and even my general Asian peers, without even realizing it, have put their natural urges and talents to rest before they even sought to know their true potential. Not because their parents ever expressed a negative thought but because of the undue fear of what their parents might say if they ever came to know. It is not even the true fear that curbs these dreamers, but the unknown reaction.
We are practically programmed to know what our parents like, and because we like our parents back, the lot of us end up being parent pleasers with our careers--coming up with great pre-med hoaxes like "global medicine" and "health and humanity" to "theater...with a minor in computer science". Our need for their continued approval, both monetary and laudatory, is almost pathological with how much that need compounds with unnecessary parental pressures and negative self talk.
I don’t know about you, but my mom is the voice in my head whenever I think of taking risks professionally. She was the voice in my head that said, “Kutti, why would you publish this saying bad things about your family! Why don’t you love me?!” She is the one that would nag incessantly and lovingly about being a doctor and how that was her dream as a child, especially when she reflect so on growing up with her favorite uncle and her grandfather who were both physicians.
Being the eldest granddaughter of six, four of whom are my younger “cousin-sisters”, I was the hesitant standard-bearer. Ever ready, even over the summers we spent in India, if my one-year-my-junior cousin had learned anything I hadn’t, I was unyielding in my quest to meet the mark. When I was seven, my cousin had already learned cursive as it is standard in India to have joined-up writing. I was distraught, to say the least, and demanded my father for workbooks at once, please, so I could rectify these undue gaps in my knowledge.
I came back to school stateside quite pleased with myself, though my cursive writing was atrocious. I still held the lead. Over time, though we did not observe ranks like the Indian system, I kept my grades up and achieved the requisite accolades from the extended family. My immediate family always pushed me in the direction of my dreams, never batting an eye when I signed up for the school musical, or guitar lessons, or wanted to do poetry workshops in the middle of the summer.
When it came time to pick a major for college, I had all but dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s on neuroscience, for it was my saving grace, my panacea, if you will. With Neuroscience, I was looking to kill all the birds with one stone. I was going to solve my familial woes, all neurological disorders everywhere, earn my Nobel, and simultaneously be really happy learning bits and pieces from every field imaginable! What could go wrong?
I had my stops and starts with my field of study, but when all was said and done, it allowed me the room I needed to learn and grow and come to terms with my family and my life. I learned to be a scientist through the explorations of how my thoughts came to pen. And I learned to be a better writer through my trials of penning those imaginings into words that spoke clearly. My neuroscience journey started at the age of twelve, and while it will never truly end, it came to its apex at the age of twenty-one. I am so grateful to have the privilege of calling myself a true neuroscientist now, amidst my mentors and my most admired heroes.
But to be honest, the one identity that I think I always deny myself of owning fully is that of a writer. To call thyself a writer comes with so much ridicule. We are all writers. We are all thinkers. What makes thou so special? Are you published? They ask. Oh, I write, too. But no one reads it. How many followers do you have? I reply, I write to exist. I write to feel and to process. I write because my mind grows restless with all the words, overflowing, like a babbling brook that turns into a waterfall that flows into a channel by the shore of an island, in the midst of an ugly, windy storm. I write because if I don’t, these words become caustic. They explode from within like a volcanic blast, lava oozing, and leaving all but destruction in its wake. I write because when I write, the world is no longer sideways and backwards, and seems to right itself again. I write because when I write, just the rhythm of the keys, creating my brain’s overdriven thoughts to pixels on a screen, creates this peaceful lull in my heart. I’m calm. Because I write.
So there. I have “come out of the closet”, so to speak.
I am a woman.
I am twenty-one.
I am heterosexual.
I am an ally to all.
I am South Asian.
I am a citizen of these United States of America.
And I am a writer.
xoxo,
maithreyi
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