I Am Done Being A Woman.

From now on, I will celebrate the person in me. Not the woman not the lady not the girl. After reading umpteen articles about women on 8^th March every year, it stuck me that the person in me is being suffocated trying to be the woman in me. Please don’t get me wrong – I love being a woman; I just don’t want to fight it or justify it any longer. Wherever I am today, I am because I am. I would have been in this same place, even if I was a man. I don’t believe that I would have been in a ‘better’ position in life – personally or professionally – if I was a man.

So, sure, like the rest of everything, I would like things a tad altered. Altered in a manner to make me appreciate myself for myself, not because I am able to achieve some goal inspite of being a woman. . I don’t want to fight men or try to prove my ilk superior to theirs. I want to proceed at my pace. There are umpteen times that I want to dissolve in the anonymity of humankind, instead I am shoved into the limelight because Bingo! I happen to be a – woman.

Being a woman in today’s times is almost a curse. I wish I was born in the past centuries, where a woman was expected to be a woman. You know, the typical woman – cook, clean, create, clad and cuddle the kids. Instead, I am here – expected to be all-in-one. Friend to my husband, daughter to my mother-in-law, supermom to my son, son to my mother, counselor to my colleague….. when all I want to be is myself.

I am upto my gills with the constant portrayal of the ‘successful’ woman as one who ‘manages the balance in her life’. Oh my – imagine living an entire life ‘managing’, not living, but ‘managing’. How I want to be successful – without managing, without the juggling that has now become second nature to most of us. I want to be successful at a slow pace.

I don’t want every International Women’s Day to focus on ‘single woman’, or ‘woman in unusual professions’ or some such concept that brings the focus bang again on women, making them aware , much more on that day than any other, that – hey! you are a woman, you are ‘different’ .

Of course, we are different, just like every person is. We are not different because we are women. Traditionally, we may have been the housemakers, not the bread winners, now, maybe we are both – but then, that is how evolution has always worked. Human beings have always adopted and adapted to new situations. Who knows what we will be in the coming centuries?

Till then, don’t make us objects of lust or objects of pity. Just let us be. Be the person, we are.