Theloopylululog

The biggest, baddest and most excruciating of all conspiracy theories ever sold to me is You Are Not Enough.

What’s inhuman about it is I bought it. I didn’t just buy it once or twice. No no. I handed over my autonomy to whomsoever was selling it and made a lifetime subscription to it.

Not once sitting myself down to think, ponder, contemplate who sold it and why. Because everyone was selling it and everybody else was buying it. Why must I be left behind, eh?

My ancestors have been doling it out for free like they are a free soup kitchen for the vulnerable. They in turn were fed on the same by the society and community surrounding them.

I got handed down the memo by my parents and their siblings, who were handed down the same by their families and the unbroken chain continues to eternity.

My parents were beaten into being perfect like as if they were raw silver being whacked in their goat skin pouches into perfect shimmery sheets. They moulded me the same way. One physically abusive while the other emotionally scathing.

I remained inside the goat skin pouch, continuously hammered down by the mallet of family, community and society’s expectations. Each one peered down from time to time to check if I was good enough as per their requirements.

I was forever a means to their ends.

If only you were a boy…If only you stopped crying so much…If only you made more friends…If only you were social enough…If only you were more like your siblings…If only you weren’t so flat chested…If only you had wider hips…If only you weren’t so honest…If only you spoke softly…If only you weren’t so outspoken…If only you had scored over 90%…If only you weren’t so dark…If only you had married at the age of 25…If only you had bowed down to our wishes…If only you weren’t a spinster…If only you weren’t an entrepreneur…If only you had settled down like everybody else…If only you owned houses, cars and a slice of Mars…

If only…If only…If only…If only you were anything but you, do you have any idea how easy it would be for us to accept you?

I carried the impossible weight of You Are Not Enough imagining myself to be the mighty Atlas. Despite the burden, I secretly peeped out of the goat skin pouch often, trying to figure out to whose ends am I being forced into slavery as means.

And then I turned 33.

Something just snapped within me. I had had enough role playing Atlas. I wasn’t that Titan. I was just ME. And I was very happy being ME.

I decided to end my lifetime subscription to this absurd conspiracy. They can’t decide my identity or mould me as per their whims.

I let myself out of the pouch. Freedom? No way. Suddenly I found myself in a battleground facing the world.

It felt good. Atleast now I could see who they were.

Naively I fought. And fought for a decade. Against them. Trying to knock some sense into them. To prove I needn’t be good enough. I was enough as is.

One fine day, I just laid down my arms quietly and turned my back on them and walked away.

My freedom doesn’t need their permission. My identity doesn’t need their agreement.

Who am I? That’s for me to discover and the world to applaud. Everything else is an intrusion to my privacy, agency and identity.

I am everything I need me to be. For myself.

I am who I am just the way I moulded myself to become. For myself.

I am enough. No adjectives needed or applied. For myself.

I am my means. I am my end. No one and nothing else matters.

The world has a queer way to feed us it’s weakness and label it our strength. And it would strive really hard to make us believe in it fervently until we believe it’s God’s word and begin to peddle it to everyone around us freely. Until there comes a time this unholy conspiracy becomes the truth of our lives.

It’s unbelievable! Yes.

Tragic even? Yes.

But are we any the wiser?

That’s for us to answer.