My Sixteenth Birthday

June 2013. I was turning 16, the year I would step into what felt like the "real world", moving from school into junior college. In a family of 14, June was the most celebratory month of the year. Four birthdays in one month. Every June, we did something big together and that year, it was a trip to Goa and Coorg. I was electric with excitement. I had bought a beautiful rustic top especially to wear on my birthday. I couldn't wait. On the night before my birthday, we dressed up for a fancy dinner at the resort. I borrowed my sister's knee-length turquoise sleeveless dress and I felt like a doll in it. We were all laughing and clicking photos outside the restaurant when my aunt walked up to me and said,

"Bhavu, now you're growing up. You should wear clothes that complement your body."

I heard that. Said nothing. I looked left, then right at my sisters, who looked, to my eyes, perfect. Thin. Then I looked at myself and felt my arms were huge and ugly. I felt ugly. I walked quietly to my mom, borrowed her scarf, and wrapped it around me. I couldn't wait to get back to my room and get out of that dress. The next morning was my birthday. Time to wear my new rustic top. But the discomfort from the night before hadn't left it had settled in. I wore it anyway, trying to push through. But I quietly packed a thin pink full-sleeved shirt in my sling bag, just in case. As soon as we reached the airport, I slipped into the washroom, took the top off, and put the pink shirt on. I told everyone I'd spilled something on my top and had a backup. I had felt unbearably uncomfortable the entire ride there. From that day on, I never wore a sleeveless top or dress again. I became deeply conscious of how I looked dressing either in monotone or like I didn't care, as a kind of armour. But the truth underneath was this: I believed I was ugly. That every single person around me was prettier than me.

Funny, isn't it? How can "dress for your body type" quietly translate to "you are not enough"?

It was seven years later that I realised how much I had been carrying. How much I had resented her. How much I had used that one comment as a reason to demean myself every single day. And how there was no human being on this earth with a worse opinion of me than me yet I had handed all of that blame to her.

Seven years later, when I wrote a forgiveness letter to her expressing how I no longer wish to make her the villain of my life to hate myself and not be responsible for how I am, and accept that love she has for me, I was finally able to see myself in the mirror with the same love and admiration.

I wrote:

"Dear Aunty,

I have seen you head this family of ours since I was born. But I never understood what makes you want to do that, what kind of responsibility it is, what makes you so uptight with it, etc. In short, I was never able to understand you.

But as I grew up and began truly 'listening', I began attempting to see you and be with you. I also understood that this view of mine that you are uptight and it can be difficult to sustain around you because everything feels so tight, is actually because of a resentment I carried for years within me.

To say it is a resentment is not to say you were wrong somewhere or I was. It is to simply say that something was always "off" there in the way I was around you. So today I am writing this to share that with you and truly acknowledge you for who you really have been to me, which I couldn't do so far.

It was around my 16th birthday when we all were in Goa celebrating all the June birthdays in the family. I was really excited for it, because of course we were all in Goa! Before leaving I remember shopping in Bandra for a top that I would wear on my birthday. Now this was the time I had started putting on a little weight, but I never thought of it as something too much to worry about. So I used to buy and wear whatever I liked.

A day before my birthday in Goa we all were going to have a fancy dinner at the restaurant at that resort. All of us dressed up like royalty and I borrowed a sleeveless dress from Krishna I loved. When we were all clicking photos outside the restaurant, you came up to us to talk and said we all look pretty. Then you came up to me and said, "Bhavu, now you're growing up. You should wear clothes that complement your body."

At that moment, I felt like I had made a mistake and you were pointing that out. Like dressing up is actually a mindful activity, not as simple as you find the dress pretty and you will look pretty in the dress. Suddenly, clothes and dressing up became something very complicated for me. Especially as I looked at my sisters around receiving showers of compliments. In this entire scene, I saw you at the center and started viewing you like an inspector, not someone who cared for me. Someone, in front of whom I need to be perfect or will be pointed out and corrected. Someone I probably would never be perfect for. And along with that came the constant ridiculing of self with respect to looks and weight. As a result, I started wearing the most generic clothes and never touched sleeveless clothes after that.

But the fact is all you did was acknowledge something as is. You never said I looked ugly, but that is what I heard and chose to believe forever. You never said your love for me is subject to how I look or what I do in life, but I chose to see it that way.

I am sorry Aunty for blaming you for so many years for something that was an assumption and not the truth. I'm sorry for viewing you as not you, but someone I need to be conscious around. I'm sorry for being so consumed by this view of mine, that I could not acknowlegde all that you are and were for the family, all that you have done for the family.

I am sorry for distancing myself from you and eventually from the rest of the family because of feeling like I am not a part of y'all based on this incident. And for then changing my entire view to everything anyone said about me in the family. I stayed in fear and anger for many years based on this and hid myself as much as possible from every person's eye.

In sharing this with you, I finally am able to see how much I judged everyone, to hide how much I judged myself. I finally feel free to share myself with you and be myself around the family too.

Thank you!" It has been a few years since I wrote this letter and the impact of this has been unimaginable for that 22 year old or that 16 year old Bhavisha. Someone who could barely be comfortable around her own family is now comfortable in sharing herself with others, in posting on social media, in receiving compliments and being able to even believe them!

I regained my power to share myself and accept myself.

---

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