The Real Niche

by NK.

Tag: personal-growth

  • Asking for a Friend

    When I was a kid, I was a victim of one of those little fortune-telling balls.

    You know the kind. I mean, poor Ross tried to use it to make a decision he clearly had to make for himself.

    You ask it a question, shake it around, and it gives you some ridiculous little answer that somehow feels incredibly important when you’re nine years old, or, in Ross’ case, when you’re deciding between your wife and your best friend.

    Well, one day we were asking questions to it in class, and someone asked it: “Is this person really Nisha’s friend?”

    Who am I talking about? Just a random girl who, at that time, I thought was a friend. So did this random ball thing because the answer was yes.

    But the girl who it was about inconspicuously shook her head. No.

    This wasn’t the first time I had felt rejected and dejected by someone I thought I could trust. 

    I remember that, not because it was some enormous childhood betrayal, but because it was one of those tiny moments that gets filed somewhere deep inside you.

    The kind you don’t realize you’ve carried until you’re much older and suddenly understand why it stayed.

    Because somewhere inside me, I think I had already been asking that question.

    Am I actually someone’s person? Do people really choose me?

    Do I matter to people in the way they matter to me?

    That question started much earlier than that little fortune-telling ball.

    When I was younger, I didn’t really have friends. Instead I was bullied. I was made fun of. I was the weird kid.

    And there was more going on in my life than most people around me probably understood.

    By the time I was five years old, I had already experienced the biggest change; my grandmother had passed away.

    We moved into a new home, and there was this new energy in my family. Later on in my life, probably closer to my 30s, I learned that was grief. That grief was taken out on me… a lot. 

    There were things happening inside my home that I didn’t necessarily know how to process, let alone explain to another child. And I don’t think any of that reflected particularly well on me socially.

    Because I wasn’t walking around thinking, I’m grieving, my family is changing, and I’m having trouble processing all of this.

    I was just a kid. A kid who was overwhelmed. A kid who didn’t always know how to behave. A kid who didn’t always understand why she felt the way she felt.

    And when you’re already struggling to understand yourself, being rejected by other children can make you start looking for an explanation.

    Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m too weird. Maybe I’m not likable. Maybe people don’t want me around. Maybe I shouldn’t be around.

    When I think about that little girl, I think about her asking something much bigger: Am I chosen?

    And I spent a lot of my life trying to answer that question…

    As I got older, my answer became: I’ll become useful enough to be chosen. 

    I became a student of other people. I watched what people thought was interesting.

    What they thought was cool. What they laughed at. What they liked. What they talked about. What kind of clothes they wore. What music they listened to. What personalities got attention.

    And then I tried to become some version of those things.

    Sometimes I genuinely liked them. Sometimes I absolutely did not. Sometimes I pretended I did. Sometimes I pretended to be something I wasn’t because I thought that version of me would be more acceptable.

    It was peak people-pleasing. And, in hindsight, it was kind of hilarious too. Because I was also a weird kid who would literally go around telling other kids they were weird.

    Millennials were something else, truly. But even that makes sense to me now.

    I was trying so desperately to figure out where I belonged that I was sometimes participating in the very social hierarchy that made me feel excluded.

    If I could identify who was weird before someone identified me as weird, maybe I could protect myself.

    If I could figure out what was cool before someone decided I wasn’t cool, maybe I could stay ahead of it.

    I wanted to be liked. Desperately. And it wasn’t limited to friendships.

    I chased attention. I wanted to feel desirable. I wanted to feel interesting. I wanted to feel chosen.

    I was so fixed on everyone paying attention to me, for a change. Fixed on finally not being overlooked. 

    And I think I was constantly looking outside myself for evidence that I was enough.

    So I became adaptable.

    I knew how to read a room. I’ve been doing it since I was a child. I learned how to become what people needed. I learned how to make people comfortable. I learned how to make people laugh. I learned how to make myself useful.

    And eventually, something interesting happened.

    It worked.

    People started liking me. People started wanting me around.

    I developed friendships. I became social. I became someone who could walk into a room and connect with people.

    And somewhere along the way, the question changed.

    I wasn’t asking anymore: How do I get people to like me?

    I had figured that part out.

    The question became: How do I make sure they don’t leave?

    And that is where everything got more complicated…

    By the time I was a young adult, I had become incredibly valuable to people.

    And I loved it. Truly.

    If there was a party? I got it.

    Makeup? I got it.

    Relationship problems? I got it.

    Need someone to go out and have fun with? I got it.

    Good food? I got it.

    Need advice? Call me.

    Need someone to talk to? I’m here.

    Need someone to help you figure out what you’re feeling? Let’s sit down.

    Need someone to show up? I’ll show up.

    Have an emergency? SOS me.

    I became the person who knew things. The person who could figure things out. The person who could make things happen.

    The person who knew what restaurant to go to, what makeup to buy, what to say to your boyfriend, how to plan the night, where to go, what to do, how to fix the problem.

    And I was genuinely excited to be that person.

    I loved being useful. I loved being the person people trusted. I loved knowing that if someone called me, I could probably help.

    And eventually, people came to me with much bigger things than where to eat or what lipstick to buy.

    They came to me with their breakups. Their family problems. Their relationship problems. Their secrets. Their darkest moments. The things they couldn’t say out loud. The things they couldn’t admit to anyone else.

    I became the person people trusted with the parts of themselves they were ashamed of. And I was good at it.

    I could sit with people in uncomfortable places. I could listen without immediately judging. I could see through things. I could tell people what they didn’t necessarily want to hear. I could give people something to believe in when they were falling apart. I could be the person who helped them get back on their feet.

    There were people who later told me I had changed their lives.

    People who said I helped them leave relationships. People who said I inspired them to change their health. People who told me things about themselves they couldn’t repeat to anyone else.

    People who came to me when they were questioning whether they wanted to marry the person they were with. People who came to me when they had secrets that would have ruined their entire life, reputation, career. People who came to me when they didn’t know how to keep going.

    I’ve held things I couldn’t repeat even if I wanted to.

    Some secrets are so deeply personal that even years later, they don’t stop becoming so simply because the friendship changes.

    I still hold them. And I always will.

    But somewhere in those years, I began confusing two very different things.

    I confused being needed with being loved. I confused being useful with being valued. I confused being someone’s safe place with having a safe place of my own.

    And I didn’t understand the difference yet.

    Because when people need you, it can feel like belonging. Especially when you’ve spent your childhood wondering whether you belong at all.

    There is something intoxicating about realizing that someone needs you. 

    You become important. You become the person they call. You become the person who knows. You become the person who can help.

    And when your childhood has taught you to question whether you’re important enough to be chosen, being needed can feel like proof.

    For a long time, it did feel like proof. And I embraced it because I really did have an incredible community around me.

    But there was a cost I wasn’t looking at. I was so busy being everything for everybody else that I wasn’t really asking what I needed.

    I didn’t even think about myself. And when you live like that long enough, people start assuming you can handle it.

    Because you have taught them that you can…

    And there was something else underneath it that took me much longer to recognize.

    Ego is wild.

    Because the same ego that once drove me to change my persona so people would like me eventually became attached to the persona I had created.

    At first, I thought: I need to become someone people want.

    Eventually, I became so good at being that person that I started thinking: This is who I am.

    The funny part is that the persona was real, it wasn’t a facade. There were parts of me that came alive just from understanding that I could do so.

    I became social. Funny. Adaptable. Interesting. Capable. Useful.

    The person who knew what to do. The person who understood people. The person who could handle things. The person who could walk into a room and figure out how to belong.

    And then I started identifying with her. I didn’t feel like I was just existing through life, I felt like I was finally given a meaning. 

    So when life eventually forced me to change, my ego had a problem. 

    Because I didn’t just have to let go of certain behaviors. I had to let go of an identity.

    The same ego that had once convinced me I wasn’t enough had eventually convinced me that I was this very specific person.

    The strong one. The self-aware one. The one who understood. The one who could handle anything. The one who helped everyone else.

    Don’t get me wrong, many times I was that person. But sometimes I wasn’t.

    There is nothing quite like life handing you a few very humbling experiences after you have become convinced you have yourself figured out.

    I had spent so much time trying to become someone worth choosing that I eventually had to confront how attached I had become to being the person everyone could choose…

    That became the people-pleasing phase of my life. I’ll give everything so nobody leaves.

    I didn’t consciously think that sentence. It was much more subtle.

    I’ll come. I’ll help. I’ll listen. I’ll make it work. I’ll understand. I’ll forgive. I’ll adjust. I’ll be there. I’ll put my needs aside. I’ll make room. I’ll figure it out. I’ll be the bigger person. I’ll be the reliable one. I’ll be the one who doesn’t make things difficult.

    And if I kept doing that, maybe nobody would have a reason to leave.

    But there is a problem with giving people things you don’t actually want to give them.

    Eventually, you become resentful.

    Someone asks you to dinner. You don’t want to go. You say yes because you don’t want them to be disappointed.

    You go. You’re miserable. You say nothing. You go home resentful that they expected you to come.

    But they didn’t actually force you. You chose to go.

    You resented them for accepting the version of yourself you voluntarily gave them. That wasn’t fair either.

    I had been so focused on making sure nobody was disappointed in me that I wasn’t allowing other people to make informed choices about their relationships with the real me.

    I was saying yes while meaning no. I was giving things I didn’t actually want to give.

    And then quietly expecting people to somehow know the difference. 

    They couldn’t. Because I didn’t know the difference.

    I didn’t have boundaries, or, more accurately, I hadn’t learned how to have them.

    And that realization became even more uncomfortable because I eventually had to confront something about people-pleasing that I didn’t particularly like admitting:

    People-pleasing can be self-centered too.

    Not cruelly self-centered. Protectively self-centered.

    If I’m constantly giving people what I think they want so that they won’t leave me, I’m also controlling the relationship.

    I’m trying to control their perception of me. I’m trying to control whether they’re disappointed. I’m trying to control whether they stay. I’m trying to make myself so valuable that leaving me becomes difficult.

    And then when they respond to the person I’m presenting to them, I can become angry that they don’t somehow see the person underneath it.

    But how could they? I wasn’t showing her.

    I realized how much of my life I had spent trying to secure love instead of simply allowing myself to be known.

    I made myself useful. I made myself available. I anticipated what people needed. I became dependable. I became necessary.

    That is fear trying to build itself a security system. 

    And the complicated part is that people really did love me. That is what makes it harder.

    I wasn’t manipulating people in some conscious, calculated way. I don’t think there is a bone in my empathic body that could ever be malicious. 

    I was just trying to protect myself with the only tools I knew.

    But I still had to take responsibility for the fact that I was participating in relationships from a place of fear. I couldn’t demand that someone freely choose me when I was constantly constructing the conditions under which they would.

    I had to learn that being loved is not the same thing as being indispensable. 

    And this is where some of the losses in my life became important.

    Because while I had become incredibly valuable to people, there were also people I couldn’t give enough to.

    And I lost people. A lot of people. 

    But not all losses look like a friendship ending.

    Sometimes you lose someone because you outgrow each other. Sometimes they outgrow you. Sometimes someone falls in love and their life changes. Sometimes you fall in love and yours does. Sometimes someone moves. Sometimes someone gets married. Sometimes someone has a child. Sometimes someone finds a new community.

    Sometimes someone changes their beliefs. Sometimes someone heals in a direction you don’t understand. Sometimes someone becomes a person you no longer recognize. Sometimes you become the person they no longer recognize. 

    Sometimes there is betrayal. Sometimes there is resentment. Sometimes there is a boundary. Sometimes there is an apology that comes too late. Sometimes there is no apology at all.

    Sometimes you fight. Sometimes you simply stop calling. Sometimes nobody does anything terrible. Life just becomes very good at creating distance.

    And then there are the strangest losses.

    The people who are technically still in your life, but no longer in your life.

    The person you used to call every day who now gets a birthday text. The friend whose house used to feel like your house. The person whose family knew you. The person whose parents asked about you. The person whose name used to come up in every story.

    And then one day you realize you have to explain who they are. That is a loss too.

    There are people I have lost because of my choices. People I have lost because of their choices. People I have lost because we hurt each other. People I have lost because I wasn’t ready to be who they needed me to be. People I have lost because they weren’t ready to be who I needed them to be.

    People I have lost because I disappeared. People I have lost because I stayed too long. People I have lost because I expected them to read my mind. People I have lost because I didn’t understand theirs. People I have lost simply because life kept moving.

    Some of those losses were devastating. Some were necessary. Some were both.

    And I don’t want to tell the story as though every person I lost was someone I was supposed to lose, or that I was the victim for all of it. I wasn’t. I am not a victim.  That would be another way of making myself the center of every story.

    Sometimes I was hurt. Sometimes I was wrong. Sometimes they were hurt. Sometimes they were wrong. Sometimes we were both doing the best we could with the emotional tools we had at the time. Sometimes we simply weren’t good for each other anymore. And sometimes there was nothing anyone could have done.

    People leave for all kinds of reasons. People stay for all kinds of reasons too.

    And I think adulthood is partly learning not to turn every departure into a referendum on your worth.

    Those losses hurt me. A lot. Because I wasn’t some detached person who never cared.

    I cared deeply. I had spent years building relationships. I had loved people. I had invested in people. I had memories with people. And sometimes, despite everything I gave, something still wasn’t enough.

    Sometimes I couldn’t show up in the way someone needed. Sometimes I couldn’t give what they wanted. Sometimes I was changing. Sometimes they were changing. Sometimes the friendship simply couldn’t hold both of us anymore.

    And those losses challenged something I had believed for years. I had thought that if I love people enough, give enough, show up enough, understand enough, maybe I can keep them.

    But I couldn’t.

    Because people aren’t things you can earn and keep. And eventually, I think I got tired. I had given so much. I had been asked for so much. I had become so many things for so many people. And at some point I looked around and realized I had given too much. I had been asked for too much. And I was left with nothing.

    So I found what I thought was the answer. Fine. I don’t need anybody.

    And that is where Bunny entered the story…

    I think that is why Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani has stayed with me in such a strange way.

    For a long time, I understood Bunny.

    Not because I thought I was exactly like him, but because I understood the instinct.

    The need to run. The need to experience everything. The need to protect your freedom. The refusal to let another person become the reason you don’t become who you’re supposed to become.

    Bunny loves people.

    That isn’t really his problem. His problem is that he loves people while being deeply attached to his own freedom. I find something beautiful about refusing to live a life simply because other people expect you to.

    But there is another side to it.

    You can become so determined not to lose yourself that you stop realizing how often other people are losing you.

    You can call it freedom. You can call it independence. You can call it choosing yourself. 

    And sometimes it is. But sometimes it is also detachment. Sometimes it is avoidance. Sometimes it is a way of making sure nobody can ever have enough of you to hurt you.

    And I understood that too. Because I had spent so much of my life doing the opposite.

    I had over-given. Over-accommodated. Over-explained. Over-showed-up. I had made myself available. I had made myself useful. I had made myself necessary.

    And eventually, I swung so far in the opposite direction that disappearing began to feel safer than explaining myself.

    I didn’t need anybody. That was the answer.

    If I didn’t need anybody, nobody could disappoint me. If I didn’t need anybody, nobody could take too much from me. If I didn’t need anybody, nobody could make me feel like I wasn’t enough. If I didn’t need anybody, I couldn’t be abandoned.

    It felt like freedom. And, in some ways, it was. But it wasn’t the whole truth.

    Because choosing yourself is not the same thing as choosing only yourself.

    There is a difference between: 

    “I need to live my own life” and “Because I’m living my own life, I don’t have to consider how my choices affect the people who love me.”

    There is a difference between independence and emotional avoidance. There is a difference between detachment and disregard.

    There is a difference between not wanting to be controlled and not wanting to be accountable.

    I would eventually have to learn all of that. 

    But before I could, I disappeared. And I was very comfortable saying the same as Bunny…

    Mujhse koi umeed hi nahi rakhni chahiye, translation, “You should not expect anything from me”.

    Then came 2021. And everything changed.

    After my spiritual awakening, I basically fell off the face of the Earth. I fell off social media. I fell away from people. I wanted to be alone. I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I didn’t want to explain myself. I didn’t want to be available. I didn’t want to perform the version of myself everyone was accustomed to seeing.

    I needed my energy back. Because I felt like I had exhausted it.

    I had spent years giving so much of myself away that I didn’t even know what belonged to me anymore. And because I didn’t know my own boundaries, so many people around me didn’t know them either.

    So I went MIA. Not for days. Not for weeks. Not for a few months. Years. I really went away.

    At the time, I understood what was happening through the language of spiritual awakening.

    The dark night of the soul. Healing inner wounds. Shadow work. Breaking old patterns. Going inward.

    And I experienced darkness in a way that was very real to me.

    My light has always been bright. It still is. But my darkness can be incredibly dark.

    Unbearable. Unfathomable. Almost bottomless. And it scared me.

    Sometimes it scared me because I didn’t know where it ended. Eventually, though, I stopped trying to make the darkness disappear. I started understanding it.

    And then, at some point, I embraced it. Not because I wanted to suffer. Not because darkness was inherently better. But because it was part of me.

    And if I was going to understand myself, I couldn’t only understand the parts of me that were easy to love. I had to understand all of it.

    Looking back now, I understand that period differently than I did then. What I once called a spiritual awakening or a dark night of the soul feels much more like a process of coming back to myself and my dharm.

    Understanding who I was. Understanding what shaped me. Understanding what I had been carrying. Understanding my purpose. Understanding the path I was actually meant to walk. And realizing just how far I had wandered away from myself while trying to be everything for everybody else.

    I needed to find myself. But I also needed to learn something else: I couldn’t live forever in reaction to what had happened to me.

    I couldn’t spend the rest of my life either giving everyone unlimited access to me or giving nobody access at all.

    Going MIA may not have been the answer for everyone. But for me, at that time, it was necessary. The empath in me needed the empath in me. I needed to learn what it felt like to have my own energy without immediately handing it to someone else.

    I needed to know what my own thoughts sounded like. I needed to discover what I liked when I wasn’t trying to be liked. I needed to understand who I was when nobody was asking me to be anything.

    And that changed everything.

    But eventually, I realized something. 

    The opposite of having no boundaries is not disappearing. The opposite of having no boundaries is having boundaries.

    That was the middle ground I had never learned. 

    I didn’t need to give everyone everything. But I didn’t need to give everyone nothing either. I didn’t need to be available to everyone. But I didn’t need to be unavailable to everyone.

    I could say no. I could be quiet. I could take space. I could protect my energy. And I could still love people.

    I could still show up. I could still let people in. I could be a person with boundaries instead of a person who disappeared.

    That was a completely different way of living. And it forced me to look at myself honestly. Because it would have been easy to tell the story of my friendships as though I had always been the one giving more.

    I could say:

    I sacrificed everything.

    I was always there.

    I gave people everything.

    They didn’t appreciate me.

    And sometimes, honestly, that was true.

    But it wasn’t the entire story.

    Because I had also been a person who could disappear. A person who could withdraw without fully explaining why. A person who could decide that I needed space and expect everyone else to understand what that space meant.

    A person who could become so focused on protecting my own energy that I forgot other people had emotions about losing access to me too.

    That realization mattered. Because once I had spent years feeling like people didn’t understand me, I had to ask myself whether I was always making myself understandable either.

    I wasn’t.

    Sometimes I expected people to read boundaries I had never communicated. Sometimes I expected people to understand changes I hadn’t explained.

    Sometimes I expected grace for my evolution while struggling to offer the same grace when someone else’s evolution affected me.

    That was humbling. Because the lesson wasn’t: Everyone else needs to understand me better.

    The lesson was: I need to understand myself better too.

    And this became especially clear when I thought about one of my friendships.

    We had known each other since we were sophomores in high school. By the time everything happened, we had known each other for about ten years.

    Before COVID, I was still very much in what I would describe as my interesting, vivacious era. And this friendship was deeply woven into my life.

    How could it not be? We called each other early in the morning. We picked each other up for breakfast. We scheduled things around each other. We knew each other’s friends. Our lives were intertwined.

    We fought for each other. Protected each other. Loved each other. There had been real loyalty there. Real history. Real friendship.

    And there was something else about this friendship that mattered to me.

    This was someone who had seen me be vulnerable. Really vulnerable. Someone who had heard the things I didn’t tell everybody. Someone who had seen beneath the version of me that could walk into a room and handle everything.

    That is part of why the friendship mattered so much.

    This person held me in some of my darkest moments. And I held them in theirs. The loyalty was real. The years were real.

    And then they entered a relationship. And the relationship changed the shape of ours. There were things happening behind the scenes that I knew about, but I couldn’t speak about them because they weren’t mine to reveal.

    Someone else had told me why the partner didn’t like me. But I kept my mouth shut. Because another person’s confidence is not yours to weaponize.

    Eventually, though, something happened between my friend and I that needed to be addressed. So I addressed it. And suddenly I was being described in ways that felt completely foreign to me.

    I wasn’t friendly. I wasn’t trying to get to know their partner. I wasn’t hospitable. I wasn’t making enough of an effort.

    And I remember thinking:

    Me? The person who wanted them to be happy? The person who had been genuinely excited to meet this person? The person who literally works in hospitality and has an embedded hospitable personality because of it?

    Me? Wow.

    But the part that hurt wasn’t even the accusation. It was discovering that my friend agreed. This was someone who had known me for ten years. Someone who had seen me through so many versions of myself.

    And somehow, after only a few months with this person, a version of me that I didn’t recognize had become more believable than the person they had known for years.

    That devastated me. I had believed that knowing someone for ten years meant something very specific. I thought history meant understanding. I thought history meant loyalty.

    I thought history meant that even if you didn’t understand everything about me, you would at least know enough about my heart to question a version of me that felt completely foreign.

    But I was learning something much harder:

    Knowing someone for years does not automatically mean knowing who they are. You can know someone’s history without understanding their evolution. You can know who someone was at seventeen and still have no idea who they’re becoming at thirty.

    You can know their childhood, their family, their old relationships, their old habits, their old fears, and still struggle when they become someone you didn’t expect.

    The friendship eventually ended. And because our lives had been so intertwined, it affected other friendships too.

    Relationships changed. I became more skeptical. I started watching more. I became less naïve about what friendship could mean. And although that ending hurt me for a long time, I eventually began to see something else.

    The friendship had been real. And the ending was real too.

    Maybe that is one of the hardest things to accept about relationships.

    Something doesn’t have to have been fake just because it ended. Sometimes the love was real. And the relationship still wasn’t meant to continue.

    There were dynamics I hadn’t recognized while I was inside them. There were things I had tolerated because I believed longevity automatically meant something had to be preserved. And perhaps if the friendship had continued, we would have hurt each other even more.

    Sometimes people leaving your life is a blessing. Sometimes you leaving someone’s life is a blessing. Sometimes your life isn’t meant to carry whatever their next chapter contains. And sometimes theirs isn’t meant to carry yours.

    There doesn’t always have to be a villain. Sometimes two people simply become different people.

    And maybe that is the part I understand most clearly now.

    People aren’t supporting characters in our stories. They aren’t here to remain exactly who they were when we met them so that we can feel secure in who we are.

    They are living their own lives. Their own stories. Their own transformations. And so are we.

    Sometimes two people grow in the same direction. Sometimes they grow apart. Sometimes they grow apart and find each other again.

    Sometimes a friendship gets quieter without becoming meaningless. Sometimes it changes completely. Sometimes it ends. And sometimes the friendship itself is the loop.

    I think that is what I couldn’t understand when I was younger. I thought change meant something had gone wrong. 

    Now I understand that change is often the relationship doing exactly what people do: changing.

    There are friendships that belong to childhood. Friendships that belong to becoming an adult. Friendships that belong to adulthood. Friendships that somehow carry through all three. 

    There are people who know the girl you were. There are people who know the woman you’ve become. And there are rare people who can know both without insisting that either version cancel out the other.

    Those are the friendships that evolve with you, not because they never change, but because they are willing to change with you.

    Those are the connections I desire.

    Not perfect friendships. Not friendships where nobody is ever disappointed. Not friendships where everyone agrees. Not friendships where nobody ever leaves.

    I want friendships with room. Room for change. Room for disagreement. Room for silence. Room for growth. Room for phases. 

    Room for someone to say:

    I’m not who I was when you met me.

    And for the response to be:

    I know.

    Because if I want people to let me evolve, I have to let them evolve too. If I want grace for the person I became, I have to give grace to the people who became different from me. If I don’t want someone holding my past against me, I can’t hold theirs against them.

    That is where friendship becomes more than just companionship.

    It becomes a lesson in letting people be people.

    And maybe that is also where Sanātana Dharma makes sense to me in this.

    Everything is moving. Everything changes. Attachment becomes painful when we demand permanence from something whose nature is change.

    Detachment isn’t indifference.

    It isn’t:

    I don’t care about you.

    It is:

    I care about you without believing I own you.

    I can love what we were without demanding that we remain what we were. I can appreciate what you gave me without demanding that you continue giving it. I can accept that your path may take you somewhere I cannot follow. And I can accept that mine may take me somewhere you cannot follow.

    That doesn’t erase what existed. It simply means I don’t have to possess it to honor it.

    I’ve learned that now. I’ve also learned that choosing yourself doesn’t mean choosing only yourself.

    For years I swung between extremes. First, I gave too much. Then I disappeared. Now I’m learning the middle.

    I can have boundaries without becoming unavailable. I can say no without becoming cold. I can choose myself without treating everyone else like an obstacle. I can understand that my choices affect people without making myself responsible for everyone’s feelings.

    And I can accept that someone being disappointed in me doesn’t automatically mean I’ve done something wrong. 

    That’s freedom too.

    Not being wanted by everyone and being okay. Not being understood by everyone and not scrambling to explain yourself. Not being appreciated by everyone and still knowing your own worth.

    And maybe that is the hardest freedom of all:

    Knowing that someone can misunderstand you without you having to turn yourself inside out to correct their perception.

    And maybe that’s why I don’t look at the people I’ve lost the same way anymore.

    Some friendships were built for versions of me that no longer exist. Some couldn’t survive my boundaries. Some couldn’t survive my disappearance. Some couldn’t survive my evolution. Some simply ran their course. Some ended because I was wrong. Some ended because they were wrong. Some ended because we were both wrong in different ways. Some ended because we were both right about what we needed and those needs no longer fit together.

    And some stayed. Some returned. Some arrived later. Some people who had nothing to do with my developmental years became incredibly important to my adult life. Some people from my past continued to evolve alongside me.

    Those are the people I treasure because I trust that whatever happens, we can meet honestly where we are. That is a very different kind of security from the one I was looking for as a child.

    The little girl with the fortune-telling ball wanted to know whether someone was really her friend. The teenager learned to become valuable enough to belong. The woman in her twenties became someone everyone could depend on.

    And then, in 2021, she disappeared.

    She learned that being needed wasn’t the same as being known. She learned that sometimes making yourself indispensable is another way of being afraid.

    She lost people. In all the ways people are lost.

    Through distance. Through choices. Through change. Through conflict. Through silence. Through life.

    She lost a friendship that had once felt permanent. She learned that history wasn’t ownership. She learned that people-pleasing wasn’t the same thing as love. She learned that even her own ego could turn survival strategies into identities.

    She went inward. She found parts of herself she didn’t know how to hold. She confronted her darkness. She stopped giving herself away. She learned boundaries. She lost people. She found people. She discovered who could see her when she wasn’t performing.

    And now, years later, she’s coming back. Not to become who she was. To be who she is.

    That is where I am now. And I think I finally understand the question I was asking all those years ago.

    It was never really: Who will stay?

    It was: Can I be myself and still belong?

    And I think the answer is yes. But not everywhere. And not with everyone. And that’s okay. I don’t need to be everywhere with everyone.  

    Because belonging was never supposed to mean being accepted by everyone. It means finding the people with whom you don’t have to abandon yourself in order to remain. It means finding people who can see your light without requiring you to hide your darkness.

    People who can watch you change without deciding that change is betrayal. People who can tell you the truth. People who can let you tell them the truth. People who can stay when staying makes sense. And people who can leave when leaving is what life requires.

    That is the kind of friendship I understand now.

    Not possession. Not obligation. Not usefulness. Not permanence.

    Presence. Reciprocity. Room. And the willingness to keep meeting each other as we become.

    Because we are always changing. That is why friendships have seasons. That is why they have highs and lows. That is why they go quiet. That is why they loop. 

    That is why people sometimes leave and sometimes come back. That is why some friendships evolve with us and others don’t. 

    And expecting every person we love to evolve in exactly the same direction we do would be selfish.

    They have their own life. Their own timing. Their own path. Their own becoming.

    So do we.

    The point isn’t to figure out who is going to stay forever. It’s to learn how to recognize what is real while it is here. To love people without trying to own their future. To let relationships change without immediately calling the change a failure.

    To choose ourselves without choosing only ourselves. To stop measuring our worth by how much we can give. To stop confusing being needed with being known.

    And to understand that sometimes a person was meant to walk with us for a chapter, not the whole book. That doesn’t make the chapter less important. It just means the story kept going.

    And maybe that’s the most beautiful thing about the people we meet along the way.

    Some stay. Some leave. Some return. Some change us and disappear. Some change with us. And some, somehow, manage to meet us again and again at every version of ourselves.

    Not asking: Where have you been?

    Not asking: Why aren’t you who you used to be?

    Just looking at you and saying: There you are.

    To me, that is enough. To me, that has always been the point.

    – nk

  • No.

    Disclaimer & Content Warning: This article discusses sexual harassment, sexual assault, rape, coercion, victim-blaming, trauma, gender-based violence, religion, culture, and personal experiences of abuse. Some descriptions and language may be distressing or triggering for readers with related experiences. This essay reflects the author’s personal experiences, perspectives, interpretations, and opinions. It is intended as a personal and cultural commentary, not as a representation of the experiences or beliefs of all women, men, survivors, Indians, South Asians, religious communities, or members of any particular faith or culture. References to patriarchy, gender norms, religion, cultural practices, laws, statistics, and social conditions are intended to encourage discussion and examination of broader patterns. They should not be interpreted as claims that every individual within a particular group holds the same beliefs, behaves in the same way, or bears the same responsibility. Where religious traditions are discussed, the author does not intend to denigrate, attack, or speak on behalf of any faith. Religious traditions are diverse, internally complex, and interpreted differently across communities and individuals. References to Sanatana Dharm and its concepts are presented from the author’s cultural and spiritual perspective and are not intended to represent every Hindu or every interpretation of Hindu philosophy, scripture, or practice. Personal accounts are presented as the author remembers and understands them. They are not intended to identify, accuse, or make factual claims about individuals who are not named or to whom the author has not attributed specific conduct. This article is not legal, medical, psychological, or professional advice. Statistics, laws, and other factual information referenced in the article are provided for educational and contextual purposes and may change over time. Most importantly, nothing in this article is intended to place responsibility for sexual violence on survivors. Clothing, alcohol consumption, location, relationship status, previous sexual activity, flirting, silence, freezing, compliance, or any other circumstance does not by itself constitute consent. If this subject matter is personally distressing, please prioritize your wellbeing and step away from the article if necessary.

    There is a strange curriculum every girl seems to receive. Nobody formally hands it to you. There is no orientation. No textbook.

    No PowerPoint presentation called: HOW TO EXIST SAFELY AS A WOMAN.

    And yet, somehow, we learn it.

    Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t take shortcuts. Don’t wear that. Don’t drink too much. Don’t get too drunk. Don’t leave your drink unattended. Don’t get into a stranger’s car.

    Share your location. Check the back seat. Hold your keys between your fingers. Text me when you get home. Share your Uber ride with me. 

    Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t be too friendly. Don’t be too sexual. Don’t be too attractive. Don’t be too loud. Don’t go there. Don’t stay there too late. Don’t trust him. Don’t trust them. Don’t trust anybody. Every single one of us has either heard this, or said it.

    And if something happens? The questions begin.

    What were you wearing? How much did you drink? Why were you there? Why did you go home with him? Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you say no?

    And that last one makes me want to scream. Because we do say no. We have always said no. The problem is that someone decides that our no isn’t important enough to listen to.

    The curriculum is always written for women. The first time I really realized this was through school dress codes. And one particular rule always stood out to me. Spaghetti-strap tank tops.

    I remember getting in trouble once because I took my cardigan off in class after gym. I was sent to the office because what I was wearing was considered inappropriate.

    When I got there, I was let off with a warning.

    “You have to be careful with what you are doing and wearing because they can cause distractions.”

    I was eleven years old. Eleven. Think about how bizarre that is. 

    I was a child. And already the lesson was:

    Your body is something you are responsible for managing so other people don’t become distracted.

    And I was confused because up until that point, I was only told no with clothes that my mom thought was “cheap and ugly looking”. This was a whole new perspective for me. 

    We spend an enormous amount of time teaching women how to avoid being harmed. To avoid being a “distraction.”

    What a load of bullshit. You’re telling me boys can’t be taught simple values, and I have to accommodate for that? Be so fucking for real.

    Women are taught situational awareness. Women are taught self-defense. Women are taught safety apps. Women are taught to carry pepper spray. Women are taught to send their location to friends.

    Women are taught to fake having a boyfriend. Women are taught to wear wedding rings.

    Women are taught to lie about having a husband because sometimes, apparently, another man’s existence is more respected than a woman’s own boundary.

    And I find that deeply disturbing.

    Why should: “I don’t want you” not be enough?

    But: “I have a boyfriend” suddenly is?

    Why does my imaginary male representative have more authority over my body than I do? And even then, sometimes the ring doesn’t work. Because the problem was never the absence of a husband.

    The problem was the refusal to respect a woman.

    A woman’s body is not a public referendum. It does not require a male representative.

    NO is NOT a NEGOTIATION. Consent isn’t complicated.

    It isn’t a reward. It isn’t something someone earns by being persistent enough. It isn’t revoked because someone is wearing a short skirt. It isn’t invalidated because she flirted with you earlier.

    It isn’t erased because she kissed you five minutes ago. It isn’t transferred because she went home with you. 

    And it doesn’t become less meaningful because she’s your girlfriend. Your wife. Someone you’ve slept with before. Or someone you think “owes” you something.

    Consent can be given. Consent can be withdrawn. And a person doesn’t need a courtroom-quality argument to withdraw it.

    No means no.

    If you don’t understand that, stop being mad at the world and go back to grade school. You don’t need therapy, you need education. 

    And since women are apparently equipped with all the logic and sense because of our circumstances, let us enlighten you on the different phrases of the word NO:

    “I don’t want to.”

    “Stop.”

    “Move.”

    “Don’t touch me.”

    “I changed my mind.”

    “I do not want to do this anymore.”

    “I’m not interested.”

    “I’m married.”

    “I have a boyfriend.”

    “I said no.”

    And sometimes it’s simply a person physically pulling away. Being visibly uncomfortable. Freezing. Going silent.

    Recognize that another human being’s body belongs to them. 

    And when it happens, we get asked the brain-less questions..

    Why didn’t you do anything? Why didn’t you scream? Why didn’t you run? Why didn’t you fight? Why didn’t you push him away? Why didn’t you bite him? Why didn’t you call somebody? Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you say no?

    Why didn’t you—

    Stop. Seriously.

    Have you ever been in that situation? No?

    Then maybe don’t sit comfortably on the outside of someone else’s trauma and conduct an interrogation.

    Because there is something people seem to forget when they ask these questions. Your brain does not experience extreme danger the same way it experiences an ordinary Tuesday. 

    When the brain perceives an immediate threat, the amygdala and other parts of the threat-response system become heavily involved in rapidly mobilizing the body for survival.

    The nervous system can trigger fight-or-flight responses. But people can also freeze. Become immobile. Dissociate. Comply. Appease. Go quiet. Or behave in other ways that help them survive the immediate threat.

    And here’s the part people don’t seem to understand…

    You don’t get to choose your survival response like you’re picking an option from a menu.

    For one person, survival might look like fighting back. For another, survival might look like running. For another, it might mean freezing completely.

    For another, it might mean becoming quiet, complying, pretending everything is okay, and waiting for the danger to end.

    And NONE of those responses tells you whether the person wanted what was happening.

    Think about being held at gunpoint. Someone points a gun at you and says: “Give me your wallet.”

    You have options. You could fight. You could run. You could refuse. You could hand over everything you have.

    Most people would understand that handing over your wallet isn’t an enthusiastic endorsement of robbery. It’s a survival decision.

    You aren’t thinking: “You know what? I really wanted to lose my money today.”

    You’re thinking: “I want to live.”

    Maybe you calculate that your wallet isn’t worth your life. Maybe you freeze. Maybe you comply because you think fighting could get you killed. Maybe someone else would fight because they refuse to surrender.

    Both people are experiencing a response to danger. And nobody standing outside the situation gets to say: “Well, if you really didn’t want your wallet stolen, why didn’t you fight?”

    Because that’s fucking ridiculous.

    So why do we suddenly become philosophers of human behavior when the thing being taken is someone’s bodily autonomy?

    Survival doesn’t always look heroic. Most of the time it never does. We have this bizarre cultural expectation that a victim should behave like the protagonist in an action movie.

    She should scream. She should kick. She should scratch. She should bite. She should escape. She should fight until she physically cannot fight anymore.

    And if she doesn’t? People start asking whether she really resisted. But the nervous system doesn’t care about your expectations of what a “strong” person should look like.

    It cares about survival. Sometimes survival means fight. Sometimes it means flight. Sometimes it means freeze. Sometimes it means fawn or appease. Sometimes it means becoming completely still and waiting for the threat to end.

    Sometimes the safest thing a person believes they can do in that moment is: “Don’t make this worse.” And I need people to understand something incredibly important.

    A survival response is not consent. Compliance is not consent. Freezing is not consent. Being unable to physically fight is not consent. Trying to minimize the violence is not consent.

    Doing whatever you think will get you through the next five minutes alive is not consent.

    “But why didn’t she leave?”

    Maybe because her brain was trying to keep her alive. Maybe she was terrified. Maybe she froze. Maybe she thought resistance would escalate the danger. Maybe she was physically restrained. Maybe she was dissociating. 

    Maybe she didn’t know what would happen if she fought back. Maybe she tried before. Maybe she had already learned, through experience or observation, that fighting can make violence worse.

    You weren’t there. You don’t know. 

    And that’s precisely why the first response shouldn’t be: “Why didn’t you…?”

    The first response should be: “Are you safe now?”

    Or:  “What do you need?”

    Or:  “I believe you.”

    Or:  “How can I help?”

    There will be plenty of time for facts. There will be plenty of time for investigation. There will be plenty of time for evidence.

    But a traumatized person does not owe you a perfectly executed survival strategy before you decide they deserve compassion.

    And this is why I have very little patience for the endless who, what, where, when, why, and how questions when they’re being asked as an accusation rather than an attempt to understand.

    There is a difference between investigating what happened and interrogating the person it happened to.

    “What happened?” can be care.

    “Why didn’t you fight?” can be blame.

    “Are you safe?” can be compassion.

    “Why were you there?” can be judgment.

    Learn the difference.

    Because if you’ve never been in that situation, you don’t know what your nervous system would do either.

    You can imagine what you think you would do.

    “I’d fight.”

    “I’d scream.”

    “I’d kill him.”

    “I’d run.”

    Maybe. Maybe not.

    You don’t know until your brain believes your life is actually in danger. And by then, you’re not taking some calm personality test. You’re trying to survive.

    So before asking a survivor why they didn’t behave differently, stop and ask yourself what you would want someone to say to you if the roles were reversed. Because the goal isn’t to find the perfect victim. There is no perfect survival response.

    There is only a human being trying to make it out alive, and a jury of people ready to question the reality.

    The scale of this is not imaginary. This isn’t just something women are exaggerating on the internet.

    The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 1 in 3 women worldwide, about 840 million women and girls, have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate-partner violence or non-partner sexual violence during their lifetime.

    WHO identifies gender inequality and harmful gender norms among important drivers of violence against women.

    That number is so enormous that it almost stops sounding like individual stories.

    But that’s exactly what it is. 840 million individual stories. Different countries. Different religions. Different races. Different socioeconomic backgrounds. Different ages. Different personalities. Different clothes. Different lives.

    And somehow the common denominator keeps being the same thing. Someone else’s decision to violate another person’s autonomy.

    So when women talk about safety, we’re not inventing a hypothetical problem.

    We’re talking about something that happens at a scale large enough to constitute a global human-rights crisis.

    AND YES, MEN EXPERIENCE THIS TOO.

    This is important. Because I am not interested in turning this into women versus men.

    Men have been sexually assaulted. Men have been be raped. Men can be victims of coercion. Men can be afraid to report what happened to them because of shame, masculinity, disbelief, or humiliation.

    And rigid gender expectations hurt men, too.

    The idea that a man must always want sex. That a man can’t be vulnerable. That a man must fight. That a man can’t say no. That a man should “take it as a compliment.” That a man must be dominant. This a topic that needs to be discussed because it is wrong.

    We have movies that depict assault with a woman as a painful experience, yet assault against men is sometimes played for laughs.

    That is disgusting on both ends. Those ideas are destructive.

    So let me make my position extremely clear. The battle is not between men and women. Men are human. Women are human.

    The battle is between patriarchy and human rights.

    I don’t use the word patriarchy to mean that every man has an easy life. I don’t believe every man is powerful. I don’t believe every woman is powerless. And I certainly don’t believe every man is a predator.

    That’s not what the word means.

    Patriarchy describes systems and social arrangements in which men, as a group, have historically held greater authority and control over areas such as political power, property, family structures, inheritance, sexuality, and economic life.

    And systems don’t require every individual person to consciously agree with them. Sometimes they’re maintained simply because people keep saying: “That’s just how things are.”

    That’s the part I want to challenge. The person who commits the assault is responsible for the assault. But the culture around that person can either make that behavior harder to excuse, or easier.

    It can teach boys that persistence is romantic. It can teach girls that accommodating men is feminine. It can teach women to tolerate discomfort. It can teach witnesses to mind their business. It can teach victims to stay quiet.

    And it can teach everyone to accept the system as normal. That’s where the battle is. This is the part I wish we talked about more.

    We tell girls: “Don’t get raped.”

    But do we tell boys: “Don’t rape someone.”

    We tell girls: “Don’t walk home alone.”

    But do we tell boys: “If you see a woman being followed, check whether she’s safe.”

    We tell girls: “Don’t get too drunk.”

    But do we tell boys: “Someone being intoxicated does not make them available to you.”

    We teach girls how to identify dangerous men. We should also teach boys how to make sure they are never that man. And we should teach boys what it means to intervene when another man crosses a line.

    Not necessarily by starting a physical fight. I don’t want that either. Women shouldn’t have to fight men. Men shouldn’t have to fight men. Society should be better at stopping the behavior before violence becomes the only imagined intervention.

    Sometimes intervention is: “Hey. She said no.”

    Sometimes it’s: “Leave her alone.”

    Sometimes it’s getting security.

    Sometimes it’s checking on someone afterward.

    Sometimes it’s refusing to laugh at the joke.

    Sometimes it’s simply refusing to normalize the behavior.

    Silence doesn’t always make someone equally responsible for another person’s actions, but silence can absolutely help create environments where harmful behavior feels normal.

    I remember being young and walking around in New York. I was walking with three girls and three guys. Random men started approaching us. Hitting on us. And at one point, one of them ran his hands through my hair.

    Nobody did anything. That moment stayed with me. Not because I expected them to start a fight. I didn’t. I don’t want every uncomfortable interaction to become a physical confrontation. It’s unfair to be expected to be ready for battle against bad values every single time.

    But I remember thinking: Why didn’t anybody say anything?

    And then there’s the bizarre economy we’ve built around women’s fear.

    We have created an entire ecosystem of products, services, apps, features, alarms, rides, tracking systems, self-defense classes, locks, cameras, and personal safety devices designed around the reality that women have to think about being harmed.

    Let’s take transportation as an example. Companies build safety features specifically because women have legitimate concerns about traveling alone. That’s useful. But there’s something deeply revealing about it.

    We have become so accustomed to women needing protection that the existence of the fear itself has become a business model. And I’m not saying safety tools shouldn’t exist. Of course they should. I use safety precautions too.

    But precaution is not consent.

    We have normalized the precautions so thoroughly that sometimes we forget to question the reason they exist.

    So when I’m asked: “Did you book a female driver?”

    I’m met with a lot of thought, and left with a lot of sadness that cannot be explained away in simple terms.

    Think about what women are asked to monitor.

    Our clothing. Our alcohol intake. Our location. Our transportation. Our friendships. Our dating history. Our sexuality. Our body language. Our tone. Our friendliness. Our rejection. Our timing. Our reputation.

    We are expected to anticipate someone else’s potential lack of self-control. That is an enormous psychological burden.

    And the cruelest part? If something does happen, those same precautions can be turned against us.

    “Why didn’t you follow the rules?”

    Because apparently women are expected to become experts at preventing other people’s decisions.

    Are you fucking kidding me?

    In the land that is supposed to be about freedom, we are sitting here talking about Ivy League schools protecting predators so that their reputation does not tank. We have rich families covering for them so that all they have to do is write an essay. Because THAT is torture for the new generation, apparently. How pathetic.

    We actively are fighting for our rights, again, because an orange and it’s orange party decided it doesn’t like women. But I’m not surprised. I don’t have a lot of high hopes and values for a country when its people who can justify voting for an aged and molded orange.

    But then… there is India.

    India. The sacred land. The holy land. A civilization with an extraordinary spiritual vocabulary for Dharm, consciousness, divinity, creation, and the nature of existence.

    This is where my anger becomes complicated. Because I come from a culture with an extraordinary spiritual vocabulary for the feminine. And I love that part of it.

    I don’t want to reject India. I want India to live up to itself. I want Indians to live up to themselves. Sanātana Dharm contains traditions in which the feminine isn’t merely tolerated. She is divine.

    Shakti. Durga. Kali. Lakshmi. Saraswati. Parvati.

    The Mother.

    The feminine principle can represent power, knowledge, prosperity, creativity, protection, destruction, transformation, and the force that animates existence.

    Ardhanārīśvara is an image in which Shiva is represented as half male and half female, expressing the unity of Shiva and Shakti.

    Think about how profound that is. The feminine isn’t presented merely as something decorative beside the masculine.

    She is Shakti. Power. Energy. Force.

    And then we have Ardhanārīśvara: one divine form containing both masculine and feminine.

    Not enemies. Not competing for dominance.

    One whole.

    So I have to ask:

    How can a civilization possess a spiritual philosophy in which masculine and feminine are imagined as interconnected, and still struggle so profoundly with the treatment of actual women?

    I remember once sitting in a room with five women and one man. The elder in that group got up, grabbed a glass of water, and brought it to the one man because he was thirsty.

    But something caught my attention. I noticed how the elder behaved toward the man versus the women. There was something about the way she instantly jumped off her chair, filled a glass of water, covered it with a plate on top, and hurried to the man with it. This was someone who had vast knowledge of “Hinduism”.

    And that man? He said, very simply: “Learn something.”

    I know it is something small to them. I also know this is just fun and tease. There is nothing but genuine love and kindness for everyone. But does that bother you the way it bothers me? Because it bothered me. A lot.

    Not because bringing someone a glass of water is inherently wrong. But because of the expectation underneath it. The automatic assumption. The cultural programming. The idea that the man should be served while the women simply continue.

    There is nothing wrong with loving and caring for your significant other. My mom always took care of my dad, not because she had to, but because she loved him. I take care of my partner, not because I have to, but because I love him. These are not values that were brought to from “Hinduism” and that the husband is God. No.

    This comes from Sanātana Dharm. Yes, there is a difference. Because our significant others did not expect it, did not ever joke to “learn something”, and they did not believe this is the way things are. They received the love, they cherished it, and they gave it right back times a hundred. Because we are ALL divine. We are ALL beings.

    There is another part of this tradition that I want to reclaim. The feminine has long been associated with auspiciousness, beauty, prosperity, and abundance.

    Lakshmi isn’t simply a symbol of money. She represents abundance and auspiciousness.

    And traditions that ritually honor young girls as manifestations of the Divine Feminine. That symbolism matters.

    Because when we talk about honoring women, I don’t mean: “Spend all your money on her.”

    I don’t mean: “Spoil her until she never has to do anything.”

    I don’t mean: “Put her on a pedestal.” A pedestal can be another kind of cage.

    I mean something much simpler.

    Cherish her. Feed her. Protect her. Listen to her. Respect her choices. Give her room to become herself.

    Give her abundance – not necessarily through possessions, but through the abundance of being loved, supported, respected, and allowed to exist without fear.

    Sometimes abundance is simply:

    “You are safe here.”

    “You are wanted here.”

    “Your voice matters here.”

    “You don’t have to earn your right to exist.”

    That is the kind of abundance I mean.

    And this is where history gets complicated.

    I don’t want to romanticize prehistoric humanity and claim that women everywhere once lived in some universal paradise before patriarchy appeared. That’s not historically defensible. Human societies have always been diverse.

    Women have held power in some societies and periods. Women have been oppressed in others. Some traditions preserved female authority alongside male authority. Others became intensely patriarchal. There wasn’t one single day when someone woke up and invented patriarchy.

    But throughout history, many societies developed systems that increasingly regulated women’s sexuality, reproduction, labor, inheritance, property, marriage, mobility, and family roles.

    And once those systems become deeply embedded in law, religion, economics, and family structure, they can begin to look like nature.

    People stop saying: “This is the system we created.”

    And start saying: “This is simply what women are supposed to do.”

    That distinction matters. Because something can be traditional without being inevitable. Something can be old without being sacred. And something can be culturally normal without being morally right.

    Maybe one of the strangest contradictions in human history is this: People have called women sacred while simultaneously trying to control them.

    We call Nature Mother.

    Mother Earth. Mother Nature. The source of creation. Nourishment. Life. Death. Regeneration.

    And then we tell women:

    Don’t be too loud. Don’t be too sexual. Don’t be too ambitious. Don’t go there. Don’t stay out late. Don’t challenge him. Don’t embarrass the family. Don’t make him angry. Don’t make yourself “unmarriageable.” Don’t talk back. Don’t have too many partners. Don’t have too few.

    Don’t be too independent. Don’t be too dependent. Don’t age too visibly. Don’t show too much. Don’t hide too much. Be beautiful. But not too beautiful. Be desirable. But don’t invite desire.

    Be strong. But don’t intimidate men. Be successful. But don’t make your husband feel small. Be nurturing. Be agreeable.

    Be everything. Just don’t be inconvenient.

    We worship the feminine. Then we police the woman.

    How did we get here?

    The first thing I do want to look at is religion. And I want to be especially careful here. I don’t want to cherry-pick religious texts from different faiths simply to prove that religion is sexist.

    That would be intellectually lazy.

    Religious traditions are enormous, internally diverse bodies of thought. They contain texts that have been interpreted in patriarchal ways. They contain texts that elevate women. Texts that emphasize mutual obligations.

    Stories of female authority. Female wisdom. Female devotion. Female divinity. And traditions of reinterpretation.

    So rather than weaponizing religion, I would rather ask: What happens when human beings take a spiritual ideal and turn it into a hierarchy?

    Sometimes the problem is that people take something sacred and use it to justify control. And that distinction matters too.

    If you tell me that a woman is sacred, I want to know: How do you treat her?

    Not how beautifully you speak about her. Not how many goddesses you worship. Not how many rituals you perform. How do you treat the actual woman in front of you?

    You can worship Durga and still tell your daughter to sit down and be quiet. You can pray to Lakshmi and still treat your wife like property. You can celebrate motherhood while expecting mothers to sacrifice themselves indefinitely.

    You can invoke Saraswati while discouraging your daughter from becoming educated. You can admire Kali’s power while telling women that anger makes them unattractive.

    You can call Parvati the embodiment of devotion while confusing devotion with submission. And you can celebrate Ardhanārīśvara while believing the man should always have the final word.

    That’s the contradiction I care about. I don’t want to weaponize spirituality against people. I want spirituality to hold us accountable to its highest ideals.

    If you believe in Shakti, respect women’s power. If you honor Lakshmi, don’t treat daughters like burdens. If you revere Saraswati, educate girls.

    If you admire Durga, stop teaching women that strength is unfeminine. If you celebrate the Mother, don’t dehumanize mothers.

    And if Shiva and Shakti can exist as one divine whole, maybe we should stop pretending that human beings need a hierarchy between masculine and feminine in order to function.

    I want to be so clear with you.

    THIS IS NOT A WAR BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN.

    I need to say this again. Because I know someone will read this and hear: “She hates men.”

    I’ll admit it.

    I do say I hate men. There are countless moments when I have felt deeply disgusted and unsafe by men as a group. That’s an emotional response to many lived experience, and to witnessing the behavior of other people.

    Because every single woman has a story. Your mom, your sister, your cousin, your daughter, your girlfriend, your wife, your best friend, the ex that broke your heart, the ex whose heart you broke. Every single woman. This is why they would rather pick the bear.

    But it is not a scientific conclusion about every individual man. Because I know men who are kind. Men who protect without controlling. Men who listen. Men who respect boundaries. Men who call their friends out. Men who believe women.

    Men who don’t need to dominate a room. Men who don’t need to prove their masculinity by humiliating someone else. Men who understand that consent isn’t an obstacle.

    Men who understand that strength doesn’t mean intimidation. Men who understand that protecting women doesn’t mean owning them.

    Some of the greatest men in my life are the ones I grew up with, and my parents never instilled fear or duty regarding men. I wasn’t taught I had to serve them. I was not taught that I have to wear certain things because of them. I was not taught that there was something wrong with being friends with them. I didn’t start seeing the distinction until I was out around society a lot more.

    My feelings don’t come from nowhere.

    I am a survivor of sexual assault and rape. I was 15, 16, 23, and 24. These specific ages include the men who have succeeded in taking away my autonomy, not the men that forced themselves upon me in trying to succeed. I was too young to even know what to identify it as. I lost my virginity to it. I was in a relationship with someone who didn’t believe my no. I believed someone to be my mentor.

    These aren’t theoretical conversations for me. I know what it means to have your body become a place where someone else believes they have authority. I know what it feels like to know that something wrong was done to you, but the accused ends up being you. I was blamed for it. I was shamed for it.vI was told I shouldn’t be so hurt because it happened to me before.

    So, yes, I speak from a lot of experience. It was this very experience that brought me to PCOS/PMOS. Trauma changes your body. I still live with it. Every. Single. Day.

    So no, this isn’t a war against men. It is a war against the idea that one human being is entitled to dominate another. And that is a human-rights issue.

    Women are tired.

    Tired of being told to be careful. Tired of being told to dress differently. Tired of being told to carry something for protection. Tired of being told to send our location. Tired of being told not to drink. Tired of being told to smile. Tired of being told we’re overreacting.

    Tired of being told we’re too emotional. Tired of being told we’re too aggressive. Tired of being told we’re too independent. Tired of being told we’re not independent enough. Tired of being told to make ourselves smaller. Tired of being told to make ourselves more desirable.

    Tired of having to calculate whether being friendly will be misinterpreted. Tired of having to calculate whether being rude will make someone angry. Tired of wondering whether saying no will trigger retaliation. Tired of being asked what we did before anyone asks what happened to us.

    And most of all, tired of being told that the solution is for us to become better at surviving the problem.

    And then there is the law. Because culture, values, and spirituality aren’t the only things that matter. Law matters. Institutions matter. Enforcement matters. Access to justice matters.

    The way a society defines sexual violence matters. And laws themselves can reveal what a society considers a person’s rights to be.

    THIS IS WHY “NOT ALL MEN” ISN’T THE END OF THE CONVERSATION.

    It’s not even the conversation at all.

    When a woman talks about violence against women, responding with: “Not all men” misses the point.

    I know it’s not all men, but it’s always the ones who feel offended by it that feel the need to defend it. Because the ones who are secure? The ones who truly value human life? They are not offended.

    Give credit to the intellect. Every woman had to learn to be an adult when she was just a little girl. We are aware. We know. We know not all men are rapists. We know not all men harass women. We know not all men are violent.

    But “not all men” doesn’t answer the question.

    The question is: What are we doing about the men who are? What are we doing about the culture that teaches people to excuse them? What are we doing when we witness it? What are we teaching the next generation?

    That’s the conversation. So stop saying “Not all men” as though you’ve contributed something profound to the conversation.

    We do not need more women who know how to survive. We need fewer reasons for women to need survival skills.

    I don’t want the ultimate achievement to be: “Congratulations! You have learned how to detect danger in every room.”

    And yet… I am almost certain my discernment has been praised the most.

    I don’t want anyone’s daughter to need a mental checklist every time she leaves the house. I don’t want her to know how to hold her keys between her fingers. I don’t want her to have to pretend to be married.

    I don’t want her to text: “Home safe.” because she knows that someone might hurt her. I want her to text: “I had fun.”

    I want her to walk. I want her to laugh. I want her to dance. I want her to travel. I want her to wear whatever she wants. I want her to be alone without being afraid. I want her to reject someone without calculating the consequences.

    I want her to know that her no is enough. And I want boys to grow up knowing that this isn’t some extraordinary request. It’s basic human decency.

    And it isn’t about teaching women to live their life instead of fearing it. No.

    And here is what bothers me most.

    Women are constantly asked to build a legal case for their own boundaries.

    I said no. I was wearing this. I wasn’t drinking. I was drinking. I had a boyfriend. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I told him three times. I moved away. I froze. I fought. I didn’t fight. I screamed. I couldn’t scream.

    Why are we constantly being asked to prove that we deserved autonomy?

    Why isn’t the starting point simply: She is a HUMAN BEING. That’s enough.

    And this brings me back to where I started.

    To Shakti. To Lakshmi. To the feminine. To women. To men. To humanity.

    I don’t want women placed on pedestals. Because a pedestal is still a cage. I don’t need to be worshipped. I need to be respected. I don’t need a man to protect my honor. I need to be recognized as someone who owns her own life.

    And perhaps that is the lesson we have missed.

    The feminine does not need to be worshipped instead of respected. She needs to be respected because she is human. And if your spirituality teaches you to see the feminine as sacred, beautiful. Let that spirituality begin with the woman standing directly in front of you.

    Your daughter. Your wife. Your mother. Your sister. Your coworker.

    The woman walking alone down the street. The woman who said no. The woman who changed her mind. The woman who doesn’t want you. The woman who wants you. The woman who owes you absolutely nothing.

    Because if we can worship Shakti but cannot respect a woman’s autonomy, perhaps we have misunderstood what Shakti was trying to teach us.

    The offering was never supposed to be her freedom. The offering was supposed to be our reverence. And reverence without respect isn’t reverence at all. You cannot have a profound awe for something and then actively disrespect it.

    This is not a war. It is a correction.

    A correction of the idea that women are naturally submissive. A correction of the idea that men are naturally dominant. A correction of the idea that girls must be taught how not to be harmed instead of boys being taught not to harm.

    A correction of the idea that a relationship gives someone ownership of another person’s body. A correction of the idea that a woman’s clothing is an invitation.

    A correction of the idea that silence means consent. A correction of the idea that persistence is romance. A correction of the idea that protecting women means controlling them. A correction of the idea that spirituality means nothing more than rituals.

    A correction of the idea that tradition is automatically morality. A correction of the idea that women must become smaller so men can feel bigger.

    And perhaps most importantly, a correction of the idea that this is a battle between men and women.

    It isn’t.

    The battle is between domination and dignity. Between entitlement and autonomy. Between silence and accountability. Between patriarchy and human rights.

    Because women are humans. Men are humans. And no human being should have to earn the right to feel safe inside their own body.

    I don’t want a world where women become better at surviving men. I want a world where women don’t have to.I don’t want to teach women how to live at their own risk. I want the risk to stop being theirs alone.

    That’s the real offering we owe each other. Not control. Not ownership. Not fear. Not silence. Just the simple, radical recognition that another human being is a human being.

    That should have been enough all along.

    – nk