I want a Giraffe staring down at me

I came home for the weekend to relax and not think about my worries but my mother and aunt had different plans.

It didn't help that some couple of weeks ago my aunt called up late in the evening to tell me that I should consider my abuser cousin as a future spouse (thanks for keeping my trust like everyone else, mom). When I calmly asked if mother knew, the reply was that she was asking on her behalf. Of course.

The effort it took me to contain myself was more than I could bear. I cried all night. It started raining and then I just stood in the window for many hours until it was time for morning prayers. I don't know if I ever felt as faithless as I did that night.

Sometimes, I feel like it's not my life that I'm living but my life is being lived by everyone else. I don't want to get married but I have to because my mother and my aunts want that. I don't want to have kids but because I'm a woman, I'm expected to. I love someone else but I should jump into a marriage because that's what the society expects me to do.

So here I was in a better mood for the Labor Day weekend when my mother announced that there are two different people coming to see me for their sons. I really wished at that moment that I had not taken the extra day off.

Like all the rituals in this blasted place, one has to get all dolled up and be ready but for people like me, we have to hear how we're not beautiful and fat etc despite everything. Nobody cares how intelligent you are or how many books you've read or how much time you wasted studying.

As of yesterday, one of the people have asked for my hand in marriage (lol... the phrase smacks of barbarianism; oh, well!). It's almost 5 in the morning and I haven't slept a wink because I have been thinking and asking myself why I'm going to do this for my parents.

I've been asking myself for a long time whether it's right to marry just to make your parents happy? I don't even live with them anymore. It's true that our society requires girls to stay at home and then get married and stay at home. Basically, pass the weight to someone else.

It's more than that. There was a brief period when I wanted to marry the person I love and it's true that it made me want to have kids and what not but that feeling has completely been wiped out. I have been trying to tell myself that perhaps getting married will distract me enough to forget everything and that I'll enjoy it. After all, I don't know the person. It's another thing that when he sees me later in the morning, he might reject me. Part of me minds that because the whole of me knows that I'm not a cow or a sheep to be rejected but that same whole knows that's how we are treated and that's how I have been treated even by the persons who claim to love me.

Try as I might, I cannot convince myself. How can I fob myself off on someone like that? How is it expected that we will do things together in life without knowing each other at all? How is it expected for strangers sprung on each other to survive? It's not like we are living 30 years ago in our parents (and I suppose 40 years for his parents) time where everything was decided by someone else because you just didn't 'know better'.

Since yesterday, I have been trembling, not with fear but with a growing sense that I am going to lose my hope forever. I know that despite everything I still love just that one person. I have been hoping and praying that he will come around (thus proving that females are sentimental fools). Added to that is the fear that if all goes like society expects it then I am a hypocrite of the highest order, set to deceive someone in the same way that I fear I have been deceived. I don't know if this other person deserves it but who are any of us to judge.

The counting of hours is so difficult. No one has asked me what I need or want. I'll be skipping office for the 3rd straight day today for nothing. I am 28 and I still have to do things to make people happy when I know that they will still be unhappy no matter what I do. 

I am praying that on the way back to Lahore, I have an accident and as I'm flowing out of body, the thin, tall man stares down at me because it is my wish that he should be the last being I should see before I go.

That's how I treat my problems now. Death is my solution to everything. I am afraid of and for myself. 

Being stared down by a giraffe is my highest dream.