Brought up by semi-modern women,
Values mixed with prosperity and flavor of
obedience.
We keep trying to fulfill what we are expected
to by the society and parental hopes.
We are being told that we should be fighters
yet gentle with a strong feel of being someone’s home
And we should not stop supporting those we
call other half.
…
And here we are so damaged and so broken,
feeling lost,
From all the teachings we received, we were
never taught to seek what we truly desire.
I keep hearing my mother’s voice that I should
be so independent,
That I should always have my own money, home,
ambitions until I meet the one.
Then I should settle, forget about what I
strive to achieve and give birth to children
As my life is not yet so bright, not so deep.
Yet I am so confused from all this wisdom what
should I be – a homemaker and achiever.
What this live is supposed to be?
And it clicked me after years of depression,
tons of therapy and tears shed
That I have never been asked the question –
What exactly you want to be?
Religion put into the picture, extension of my
parents what makes the life good,
Never taught to choose what it right, just
what should make them proud.
As young women we struggle – be a good girl,
be smart, don’t provoke attention,
Stay invisible, don’t push too hard and yet we
are expected to be pure perfection –
Look at them, it’s not that hard.
…
So we break ourselves quietly, framed into the
shapes they demand.
We swallow grief in the dark, wipe off the
evidence only to return to the stage.
Taught to pour tea with trembling hands, to bleed
and smile through it.
Told that agony is noble, that silence is our
inheritance.
When we shatter into pieces, they scoff—weak,
hysterical, ungrateful, not pretty enough.
They want us clever yet not defiant,
Driven but never to go in life too far—
Soft enough to soothe, dumb enough to forget what they truly meant,
Numb enough to never fall in waves of rage - not so ladylike to admire.
When the loneliness wraps its bony hands around
our ribs,
We whisper our guilt into the mirror, ashamed
of needing more.
Some of us chain ourselves to strangers,
mistaking it for rescue.
Some of us remain untouched, too haunted to
trust.
…
No one tells us—
You don’t owe them your silence.
You don’t have to vanish to be loved.
You weren’t made to fix what’s broken in
others.
You weren’t born just to carry tradition like
a curse.
But by the time we learn this,
We've already been reshaped— cut down, dulled,
rewired.
Our identities surgically edited to match the
script of “the real woman.”
Now we drift somewhere between versions of half
truth and a lie—
Some polished and pretty, others barely
stitched together.
And the ones holding the pen keep rewriting
our parts,
Claiming it’s truth, claiming it’s fate.
We walk in borrowed skin - costumed like
clowns in someone else’s circus,
Trapped in lives we have never subscribed for,
Called by names that never felt to belong.
Still we lie next to people who never saw us.
Still we whisper in fear—What the fuck is
wrong with me?
And the truth is so cruel and so clear—
They never gave us the space to become real.
Only carved us into something they could hold,
Something easy to OWN.
