"In return, I want to offer you a few pieces of advice: try to keep it real. Stay true to what’s best in yourself and to the best of what you’ve experienced here at Vassar. Continue to expose yourself to new ideas. Trust your instincts and think for yourself. Make art, or at least value it. Look for the core of what makes each person human, appreciate the details that make them unique.
Find something that moves you or pisses you off, and do something about it. Put your self out there. Be brave. Be bold. Take action. You have a voice. Speak up, especially when something tries to keep you silent. Take a stand for what’s right. Raise a ruckus and make a change. You may not always be popular, but you’ll be part of something larger and bigger and greater that yourself. Besides, making history is extremely cool.
Hold our elected officials accountable. They work for you. Ask them anything you want. If you don’t, you’re giving up on democracy. Inez Milholland – Vassar class of 1909 – didn’t let people silence her and she didn’t let anyone stop her. She became one of the pivotal leaders of the suffragette movement. If you forget everything else I’ve said here today or if you choose to ignore it, remember Inez and remember to vote. It’s a radical act that’s still legal, and we need to keep it that way.
Speaking from my own experience, I also want to offer a warning: you will, undoubtedly, meet people who will try to shut you up or entice you to compromise your principles in any number of ways. They’ll try to seduce you and distract you with money, power, security and perhaps, most dangerously, a sense of belonging. Don’t let them; it’s just not worth it. One of the biggest threats to our world is the culture of silence and compromise—politicians who compromise their beliefs because they’re scared they’ll piss off their voters and won’t get re-elected, corporate executives who put profits above principles. You can have a conscience and still make money. You can have genuine values and still get elected. You can even make movies that do well at the box office without playing to the lowest common denominator.
And try not to let love silence you. And don’t let it kill you—always wear a condom, for god’s sake. Partner with someone who loves you and loves your voice, who loves the very core of who you are and believes in your dreams, not someone who is hell-bent on changing you."
- excerpt from Samuel L. Jackson's 2004 Vassar College commencement address
Friday, September 30, 2011
Monday, September 19, 2011
This Cradle of Civilisation
It's ironic that the one place that I find it hardest to believe in God is in a nation where there are millions of them.
You can feel the absence of a divine presence when you look into the greasy tired faces of the people around you. Their eyes bear the dull cataract of low expectations. I wonder what God the barefooted children covered with rags and mud believe in. This is a country where people are realistic, practical, territorial. There is no room here for dreams. This is the world's largest democracy, a country where its starched leaders fatten as if feeding upon the souls of its withering citizens. The real Indian is an anonymous face, and scores of them fade away everyday without leaving behind their stories. In India, death is a relief, a welcome escape, something worth believing in, like God.
You can feel the absence of a divine presence when you look into the greasy tired faces of the people around you. Their eyes bear the dull cataract of low expectations. I wonder what God the barefooted children covered with rags and mud believe in. This is a country where people are realistic, practical, territorial. There is no room here for dreams. This is the world's largest democracy, a country where its starched leaders fatten as if feeding upon the souls of its withering citizens. The real Indian is an anonymous face, and scores of them fade away everyday without leaving behind their stories. In India, death is a relief, a welcome escape, something worth believing in, like God.
Friday, September 9, 2011
Bharat Mata ki Ek Beti
If I have ever been judgmental of gold-diggers or mail-order brides (and I have), then I'm sorry. It will never happen again. I now know how they feel, even in some small tiny laughable way.
I've now been living in India by myself for over a year, and it is solely to that fact that I can attribute my metamorphosis from a fiercely independent and principled pseudo-American career woman to a shrunken Indian version of said pseudo-American who's just waiting to be rescued by the capitalist man of her dreams. Rich socialist bhhi chalega. Do we have any takers?
Don't judge me, my own medicine tastes terrible. Everytime I almost fly off of the cycle rickshaw as the rickshawala decides to speed over a pothole, I miss the shock absorbers of the cars I've ridden in in America (and Canada. You too, Oman). I curse the elements everytime I have to devastate a good hair day by savagely pulling my do back in a behenji ponytail just because it's too damn hot/sticky/windy. Over the past year, I've only ever shopped off of the street because clothes, like people, just seem to fall apart faster in this part of the world. It would hurt too much to have that happen to anything I paid more than 100 rupees for (what is that, like 2 dollars?). I never seem to want to dress nice or comb my hair here anyway. I don't even wear makeup anymore. What's the point? Two minutes on the outside, and either the wind from the autorickshaw ride will ravage the curls that usually set beautifully on their own in a controlled environment, or the monsoon mud will artistically splatter itself all along my calves and precious toes. I now scowl or even fling a dirty look at every car that screams its neverending banshee of a horn into my poor ear. I wonder if the smog and traffic exhaust has formed a permanent layer of hopelessness on my once 20-something-year-old skin. I think of all these things and then fondly remember my vanilla-and-cinnamon-scented sparsely populated existence of the West. What's a pretty girl to do when the shadow of socialism falls upon her?
I'll tell you what she's to do. Visit the parlour regularly, dress the best she can in her budget wardrobe, flash a carnivorous smile or bat a virginal eyelash (both if she's talented), and pray to the gods of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll that Prince Charming (age never a bar) will whisk her away to a capitalist country far, far away. Or at least to the nearest suburb in a nice air-conditioned apartment and car and never let her pretty soles scrape the soil of the motherland again. Inhein zameen pe mat rakhhiyega, mailay ho jaaeinge.
I've now been living in India by myself for over a year, and it is solely to that fact that I can attribute my metamorphosis from a fiercely independent and principled pseudo-American career woman to a shrunken Indian version of said pseudo-American who's just waiting to be rescued by the capitalist man of her dreams. Rich socialist bhhi chalega. Do we have any takers?
Don't judge me, my own medicine tastes terrible. Everytime I almost fly off of the cycle rickshaw as the rickshawala decides to speed over a pothole, I miss the shock absorbers of the cars I've ridden in in America (and Canada. You too, Oman). I curse the elements everytime I have to devastate a good hair day by savagely pulling my do back in a behenji ponytail just because it's too damn hot/sticky/windy. Over the past year, I've only ever shopped off of the street because clothes, like people, just seem to fall apart faster in this part of the world. It would hurt too much to have that happen to anything I paid more than 100 rupees for (what is that, like 2 dollars?). I never seem to want to dress nice or comb my hair here anyway. I don't even wear makeup anymore. What's the point? Two minutes on the outside, and either the wind from the autorickshaw ride will ravage the curls that usually set beautifully on their own in a controlled environment, or the monsoon mud will artistically splatter itself all along my calves and precious toes. I now scowl or even fling a dirty look at every car that screams its neverending banshee of a horn into my poor ear. I wonder if the smog and traffic exhaust has formed a permanent layer of hopelessness on my once 20-something-year-old skin. I think of all these things and then fondly remember my vanilla-and-cinnamon-scented sparsely populated existence of the West. What's a pretty girl to do when the shadow of socialism falls upon her?
I'll tell you what she's to do. Visit the parlour regularly, dress the best she can in her budget wardrobe, flash a carnivorous smile or bat a virginal eyelash (both if she's talented), and pray to the gods of sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll that Prince Charming (age never a bar) will whisk her away to a capitalist country far, far away. Or at least to the nearest suburb in a nice air-conditioned apartment and car and never let her pretty soles scrape the soil of the motherland again. Inhein zameen pe mat rakhhiyega, mailay ho jaaeinge.
Thursday, September 1, 2011
Pretty Woman
He was paying her to look at him that way. It didn't bother him. She was beautiful, soft, clean, and all he wanted was her to spend some time with him. There was no way a woman like that would ever be with someone like him. He knew he had paid for the softness of her eyes, he knew she did not love him, want him, she was only letting him breathe in the perfume in her hair because he had paid for it. He didn't mind. He wanted to rest the scars on his face against the dew on her shoulders, he wanted to feel her soft feet under his cracked soles, he only wanted her to not flinch as he reached out for her skin. He knew that every look of hers, every move of hers, every sound she was going to make was going to be a lie, but he didn't mind. He wanted her to lie to him, he was paying her for the performance. He wanted her to lie to him with all she had, the best she could, the biggest lies she could tell him. He would believe her. He was paying her for the illusion that someone like her could want him, that that was all it took to find a face like hers by his side, looking at him, only at him, reaching out for him with her small soft hands the way he was reaching out to her. It was beautiful. So beautiful. That something in this life could be so simple, such a small easy transaction, it was beautiful.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Casa Mia
This is the last thing I see before I go to sleep, and the first thing I see when I wake up.
This is the ceiling of the room I rent as a paying guest in Delhi's Greater Kailash I. It's been a year since I first set eyes on this ceiling. It was upsetting, I remember. I had been struggling to remain optimistic about my newest adventure in India, but the sight of the matte orange and disco yellow ceiling was the straw that broke the dam that was soldiering my tear glands. The colour combination made me cry. It was atrocious, aesthetically outrageous, the most depressing thing I'd ever seen.
Moving to India, that too New Delhi, was highly disorienting, but I had heard that the GK1 area was posh. It wasn't. It had potholes like the rest of Delhi, untrimmed trees, and dogs, dogs everywhere, wandering about the colony, peeing and pooping all over the place, snarling and barking at you until you felt your insides vibrate. This was not posh. The dogs chained at the entrance of my PG urinated and defecated all over the entrance to the building, and we would all have to begin our day (and end it) by playing hopscotch around excrement. It was not fun. That made me want to cry, but I used to be fairly decent at hopscotch when I was a kid, so I was able to manage. But I could never forget that under all my shoes would now remain layers of animal excrement that I would be tracking along everywhere I went.
Over the past year, I have shared my room not just with my roommate, but with lizards, spiders, rats large enough to be teenage rabbits, and airborne cockroaches. There used to be a couple of roosters who'd crow all day and night long outside our window, but those were taken care of some time ago, hopefully with delicious sauces. Last week I screamed a purely instinctive scream when I encountered a rat scuttling up the bannister of the staircase I was descending. I am not a screamer, so I wondered about that experience. A few days earlier, a friend had screamed as another rat (or maybe the same one?) had fallen off of the clothes that were hanging on the clothesrack behind her door, just like that, like it was the most normal thing to do, like rats plop off of clothesracks all over the world all the time.
Sigh.
This is the ceiling of the room I rent as a paying guest in Delhi's Greater Kailash I. It's been a year since I first set eyes on this ceiling. It was upsetting, I remember. I had been struggling to remain optimistic about my newest adventure in India, but the sight of the matte orange and disco yellow ceiling was the straw that broke the dam that was soldiering my tear glands. The colour combination made me cry. It was atrocious, aesthetically outrageous, the most depressing thing I'd ever seen.
Moving to India, that too New Delhi, was highly disorienting, but I had heard that the GK1 area was posh. It wasn't. It had potholes like the rest of Delhi, untrimmed trees, and dogs, dogs everywhere, wandering about the colony, peeing and pooping all over the place, snarling and barking at you until you felt your insides vibrate. This was not posh. The dogs chained at the entrance of my PG urinated and defecated all over the entrance to the building, and we would all have to begin our day (and end it) by playing hopscotch around excrement. It was not fun. That made me want to cry, but I used to be fairly decent at hopscotch when I was a kid, so I was able to manage. But I could never forget that under all my shoes would now remain layers of animal excrement that I would be tracking along everywhere I went.
Over the past year, I have shared my room not just with my roommate, but with lizards, spiders, rats large enough to be teenage rabbits, and airborne cockroaches. There used to be a couple of roosters who'd crow all day and night long outside our window, but those were taken care of some time ago, hopefully with delicious sauces. Last week I screamed a purely instinctive scream when I encountered a rat scuttling up the bannister of the staircase I was descending. I am not a screamer, so I wondered about that experience. A few days earlier, a friend had screamed as another rat (or maybe the same one?) had fallen off of the clothes that were hanging on the clothesrack behind her door, just like that, like it was the most normal thing to do, like rats plop off of clothesracks all over the world all the time.
Sigh.
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Muslim on the Run
"After Partition, many Muslims stayed behind in Bihar instead of joining Pakistan. It's an impoverished, mostly agricultural state that is considered somewhat backward by most of Bombay's middle class, and Akhtar is part of a large migration of young Bihari men who have come to Bombay in recent years to find work. He tells Cassim that he's never met a foreign Muslim before, or anyone who is partly from Pakistan; the idea of an educated, well-traveled Muslim is exotic and interesting to him." - excerpt from 'The Girl from Foreign' by Sadia Shepard
I am an educated, well-traveled Muslim, and I would be fine with that except I don't know what being a Muslim means anymore. In Oman it meant something else - reduced school hours in Ramadhan, lots of government holidays, and weekends that conveniently fell on Fridays. There were Sudani Muslims, Egyptian Muslims, Indian Muslims, Phillipino Muslims, Omani Muslims. They all wore their own national clothing and ate their own kinds of food. Masjids were beautiful, grand, clean. In America, Islam was reactionary, so Arabised, so structured. I discovered a new word - zabiha. The Muslims there would look at me funny - you don't know what zabiha is? I'd only ever heard of halaal. I didn't wear a scarf, and I would feel slightly insulted that people were surprised to find out that I was a Muslim because I didn't wear one, as if I was inadequate, not doing Islam quite right. But I was raised in the Middle East! And the more vicious public debate about Islam got, the more I withdrew philosophically into Islam, arming myself with answers to questions that I had learned to anticipate, questions that ordinarily only a scholar should have been expected to have the answers to. Islam, Islam, Islam, Islam. Bismillah-i-rahman-i-rahim. Five pillars, 1-2-3-4-5. Zakaat 2.5%. Polygamy permitted not recommended. No concept of holy wars in Islam. Back off, back off, back off. Self-proclaimed defender of the faith, the Islamic Joan of Arc, brothers and sisters across the Ummah unite. Yes, we can!
Except this past year, I plunged into mainstream India, dying to be set free from the flat two-dimensional Islamic person I'd started to see myself as from the eyes of those around me. I wanted to be more than an example of Islamic pluralism, more than someone's token centrist Muslim friend, see momma she's not a terrorist, she's quite reasonable, she doesn't even wear a scarf, she drinks Pepsi and goes to the AMC and likes Billy Joel.
This whole past year in India I have not had the time to sleep or dream even. There aren't so many Muslims around in mainstream India anyway. If they are there, they keep to themselves in their secular speech patterns and professions. They acknowledge each other in silent ways, but they daren't step over that fine line. They'll smile at each other and then look away, they'll say hello and you both know why but will not admit it. You've been noticed, you're been watched over, but neither party will do anything more about it. And what a relief that is. Nobody wants to talk about religion in this secular space where everybody dresses and talks the same. It's exhausting, it asks more questions than gives answers, and we're a tired, tired, tired country. I was so grateful that I was just another Indian face whose face and language was suspiciously Muslim-like, but everybody was so busy that at the end of the day, everybody just wanted to talk light. What a relief it was. Nobody had any religious expectations of me, nobody poked and prodded my wilting soul for justifications. We're all just too busy, everybody just wants to be left alone in peace. We all really just want to have a job and an Internet connection and the occassional trip to the mall or the theater or Bangkok.
But then a Muslim girl from Kashmir told me she looked up to me, I'm guessing because I was educated and well-travelled. Me? But I don't wear a scarf. I'd fled halfway across this blessed planet of ours just so that people would stop seeing me as a Muslim. Do you know that this whole year I almost never said as-salaam-alaikum or Khuda haafiz to anybody? I never even said insha Allah or masha Allah, and I never said Allah ka shukar in jest the way I usually do. I never said yaar, Khuda ke liye when someone was getting on my case. I didn't want to. Then when I started wanting to, I didn't. I didn't want to stick out again, I didn't want to sound different again. I wanted to be like everybody else, frivolous and carefree, without worrying about the Day of Judgment or if the French were curbing the rights of Muslim women to express themselves.
I don't seem to understand the Muslims of India. I don't know why they live in ghettoes and why they can't just shake their demoralisations off of themselves and say I'm a bloody citizen of this country and let me see you tell me what to do. Why are they so hostile to the mainstream Muslims who are honestly just trying to make a living? I am not a traitor, I don't even belong to these people, this is only the first year I have lived in this country. I don't know how to look at my own self in India the way others do when they detect my religious identity and all the things it means here. No I don't think it is acceptable to dilly-dally on a court case regarding the demolition of a religious structure where public order is disturbed and oh, people are murdered or tyrannised. Is that a typical Muslim reaction though? I don't understand how to position myself between the Deobandis and Barelvis and the Sufis and the dargahs and the Syeds and all the others. I don't have special knowledge of the Mughal period, and I don't particularly feel too connected to the Ottoman Turks. I just want air-conditioning and regular water supply and no power cuts. I don't want to be a Sharia expert, I don't even want to deal with the autorickshaw driver who insists on charging me an extra 10 rupees. Theek hai, bhaiyya, jo aapki marzi. I want to be pretty, I want to smell nice, and I want to live in luxury. Do any of these things make me more or less of a Muslim? I don't know, I don't know, I still don't know what any of it means.
I am an educated, well-traveled Muslim, and I would be fine with that except I don't know what being a Muslim means anymore. In Oman it meant something else - reduced school hours in Ramadhan, lots of government holidays, and weekends that conveniently fell on Fridays. There were Sudani Muslims, Egyptian Muslims, Indian Muslims, Phillipino Muslims, Omani Muslims. They all wore their own national clothing and ate their own kinds of food. Masjids were beautiful, grand, clean. In America, Islam was reactionary, so Arabised, so structured. I discovered a new word - zabiha. The Muslims there would look at me funny - you don't know what zabiha is? I'd only ever heard of halaal. I didn't wear a scarf, and I would feel slightly insulted that people were surprised to find out that I was a Muslim because I didn't wear one, as if I was inadequate, not doing Islam quite right. But I was raised in the Middle East! And the more vicious public debate about Islam got, the more I withdrew philosophically into Islam, arming myself with answers to questions that I had learned to anticipate, questions that ordinarily only a scholar should have been expected to have the answers to. Islam, Islam, Islam, Islam. Bismillah-i-rahman-i-rahim. Five pillars, 1-2-3-4-5. Zakaat 2.5%. Polygamy permitted not recommended. No concept of holy wars in Islam. Back off, back off, back off. Self-proclaimed defender of the faith, the Islamic Joan of Arc, brothers and sisters across the Ummah unite. Yes, we can!
Except this past year, I plunged into mainstream India, dying to be set free from the flat two-dimensional Islamic person I'd started to see myself as from the eyes of those around me. I wanted to be more than an example of Islamic pluralism, more than someone's token centrist Muslim friend, see momma she's not a terrorist, she's quite reasonable, she doesn't even wear a scarf, she drinks Pepsi and goes to the AMC and likes Billy Joel.
This whole past year in India I have not had the time to sleep or dream even. There aren't so many Muslims around in mainstream India anyway. If they are there, they keep to themselves in their secular speech patterns and professions. They acknowledge each other in silent ways, but they daren't step over that fine line. They'll smile at each other and then look away, they'll say hello and you both know why but will not admit it. You've been noticed, you're been watched over, but neither party will do anything more about it. And what a relief that is. Nobody wants to talk about religion in this secular space where everybody dresses and talks the same. It's exhausting, it asks more questions than gives answers, and we're a tired, tired, tired country. I was so grateful that I was just another Indian face whose face and language was suspiciously Muslim-like, but everybody was so busy that at the end of the day, everybody just wanted to talk light. What a relief it was. Nobody had any religious expectations of me, nobody poked and prodded my wilting soul for justifications. We're all just too busy, everybody just wants to be left alone in peace. We all really just want to have a job and an Internet connection and the occassional trip to the mall or the theater or Bangkok.
But then a Muslim girl from Kashmir told me she looked up to me, I'm guessing because I was educated and well-travelled. Me? But I don't wear a scarf. I'd fled halfway across this blessed planet of ours just so that people would stop seeing me as a Muslim. Do you know that this whole year I almost never said as-salaam-alaikum or Khuda haafiz to anybody? I never even said insha Allah or masha Allah, and I never said Allah ka shukar in jest the way I usually do. I never said yaar, Khuda ke liye when someone was getting on my case. I didn't want to. Then when I started wanting to, I didn't. I didn't want to stick out again, I didn't want to sound different again. I wanted to be like everybody else, frivolous and carefree, without worrying about the Day of Judgment or if the French were curbing the rights of Muslim women to express themselves.
I don't seem to understand the Muslims of India. I don't know why they live in ghettoes and why they can't just shake their demoralisations off of themselves and say I'm a bloody citizen of this country and let me see you tell me what to do. Why are they so hostile to the mainstream Muslims who are honestly just trying to make a living? I am not a traitor, I don't even belong to these people, this is only the first year I have lived in this country. I don't know how to look at my own self in India the way others do when they detect my religious identity and all the things it means here. No I don't think it is acceptable to dilly-dally on a court case regarding the demolition of a religious structure where public order is disturbed and oh, people are murdered or tyrannised. Is that a typical Muslim reaction though? I don't understand how to position myself between the Deobandis and Barelvis and the Sufis and the dargahs and the Syeds and all the others. I don't have special knowledge of the Mughal period, and I don't particularly feel too connected to the Ottoman Turks. I just want air-conditioning and regular water supply and no power cuts. I don't want to be a Sharia expert, I don't even want to deal with the autorickshaw driver who insists on charging me an extra 10 rupees. Theek hai, bhaiyya, jo aapki marzi. I want to be pretty, I want to smell nice, and I want to live in luxury. Do any of these things make me more or less of a Muslim? I don't know, I don't know, I still don't know what any of it means.
The Man with the Magazine
The young man sat down next to the young woman at the library. He held in his hands a magazine. A glossy magazine. He was bored. He sharply flipped one page over in her direction. The warmth of his arms carried the dull bitterness of the gloss to the young woman next to him. It startled her as it softly touched her cheek and began to fade away, but not entirely. He flipped another page. And another. It hit her cheek again. Her cheek began to heat up. He flipped another page. Her heart began to pound, her mouth began to water. Delicious. She smiled to herself.
Non (W)Riting Indian
I can't write in India. I'm not sure what it is. My head is exploding with things I want to say; I have a dull headache most days because of it. Maybe it's too much stimulus and not enough quiet time where I can process it all and give it form. India is like that - too much stimulus assaulting your senses, clogging up your creative pores so that nothing can come out. It's like you want to sweat but you can't, like you just can't get all those toxins out, so they just swirl about inside you, poisoning your blood, turning everything sour. I can't write, I can't draw, I can't sing, I just can't do it. My head feels like a collapsing star at the red giant stage - the inside is cooking and cooking and cooking, filling up with hot terrible steam, collapsing upon itself, while the outside remains maybe a little flushed and very still, on the verge of an explosion that will send shock waves throughout the universe. There's so much I have to say, and I want it to sound so beautiful and polished, but that is not India. India is not beautiful or polished. India is a crawling beehive, a wasp's nest, layer upon sticky layer of termites, breeding breeding breeding all over themselves, dirty slimy filthy limbs fighting for air and liberty, never stopping, dissolving all resources, leaving me hollow, a dream home waiting to collapse upon all of those who own it.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
Narcissus
Who is that woman in the mirror
She looks like who I was supposed to be
I haven't seen her before
But I saw her looking back at me only recently
She's pretty
In a new way
She has nice lips
Her cheekbones have pride
I like the way her shoulders move
I like the way she sits
The way her hair curls around her ear
Something about the way she looks me in the eye
She has a deep glimmer in her eye
Is she really looking at me
Could this woman
Could she really be me
She looks like who I was supposed to be
I haven't seen her before
But I saw her looking back at me only recently
She's pretty
In a new way
She has nice lips
Her cheekbones have pride
I like the way her shoulders move
I like the way she sits
The way her hair curls around her ear
Something about the way she looks me in the eye
She has a deep glimmer in her eye
Is she really looking at me
Could this woman
Could she really be me
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Why I enjoy being 30
1. I trust my judgment and live by instinct.
2. I have learned to pick my battles
3. I now know what haircut suits my face shape.
4. I have figured out how to dress according to my body type.
5. I know what sort of makeup looks good on me.
6. I have become patient.
7. I have learned to forgive myself.
8. I know what shape of eyewear works with my facial features.
9. I can recognise my PMS symptoms.
10. I allow myself to be very selective about whom I let into my life.
11. My body has finally stabilised and stopped changing.
12. I once again look like how I did before puberty hit.
13. I know how to center myself and bring myself to peace.
14. I accept what I see of myself in the mirror.
15. I am comfortable with uncertainty.
2. I have learned to pick my battles
3. I now know what haircut suits my face shape.
4. I have figured out how to dress according to my body type.
5. I know what sort of makeup looks good on me.
6. I have become patient.
7. I have learned to forgive myself.
8. I know what shape of eyewear works with my facial features.
9. I can recognise my PMS symptoms.
10. I allow myself to be very selective about whom I let into my life.
11. My body has finally stabilised and stopped changing.
12. I once again look like how I did before puberty hit.
13. I know how to center myself and bring myself to peace.
14. I accept what I see of myself in the mirror.
15. I am comfortable with uncertainty.
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