Chandini Tauklee
Different people have different definitions for identity; some say identity is a person’s personality and some say it is the qualities of a person that makes his identity.
For me identity is still a question and I am still searching for a definition that can describe my identity.
A question that people ask themselves daily..
Who am I?
What am I?
As a teenager, the answer to the question Who am I depends on the environment in which I live; I am nothing but a simple girl with a simple family living a simple life but like every teenager I have my own secrets.
As adults quote “Nothing is perfect until we want it to be”
My life is also not perfect, knowing what’s good for me and what’s not , i still choose the later.
Like every other family even my family quarrelled, a lot. The problem was simple, MONEY.
I wanted to help, I wanted to say to my mother that I know how it feels when you don’t have enough money , I know how it feels when a girl has to be the man of the house , I know how it feels to run the house with limited resources ,I know how stressful it is to educate me even when we have no money, I know how it feels to see me cry when you can’t afford to buy my favorite toy just so you could educate me, I know how it feels to hide all your problems from me.
But instead of saying all the above I always acted like a brat and forced her to give me everything that I wanted.
I knew I could have helped and could have bee supportive , yet I didn’t.
I just watched her suffer alone without even shedding a single tear.
I have been rude to her, I have shouted and argued with her and I have been destroying her dreams that she had for me.
The biggest regret of my life is seeing her hurt and needing a shoulder to cry and i still just sat in front of her like an idiot and demanded things which every girl has in today’s era , not realizing that I have a beautiful strong mother who was always been there for me.
Gathering guts I finally asked her , “how do you manage all this by yourself, mum?”
She replied , “What gives me strength is the smile on your face which is precious and important than any other problem that a middle class family goes through.”
Money is not the actual happiness nor is the solution to all our problems, But little support, love and a warm smile is.
That’s what my mother made me realize.
The worst part of being a girl is that no matter how hard you try not to be emotional, you always end up being emotional. My mother was different, handling everything alone by taking all the burden on her shoulders, she proved that She’s the MAN of my house and my heart.
She’s the one who kept the environment around me so polite and warm which makes me proud to be the daughter of a mother like her.
She’s the one behind what and who i am today and turned me from a spoiled brat to a responsible girl, from a rude person to someone polite,from a person who did not know how to smile to a person who now does not stop smiling, from a self obsessed person to a person who now only thinks about others happiness.
The girl that I am now is what my mother wanted me to be.
She is my identity or rather has made me identify myself.