The Story I Never Got to Keep

Arrogance is the worst thing in my world. But for a long time, I didn't know I was carrying it.

I remember in 7th standard I was asked to write a story for Independence Day. I did it with so much joy. I completed it, read it back, and felt satisfied, not because I needed someone to tell me it was good, but because it came from somewhere real inside me. I was already imagining my English teacher calling my name and appreciating me in front of the whole class. I was waiting for that moment.

The teacher said, "Let's discuss this in the next class." The period ended. She told me there were a few changes to make, and we'd go over it tomorrow. I said okay.

I went home and opened my notebook, ready to fix a grammar mistake here, a spelling error there. But what I saw broke something in me. The story was completely rewritten. It didn't look like mine anymore. It didn't feel like mine.

I felt betrayed. If I made those changes, the story wouldn't be mine at all. It would be like someone had taken my idea and quietly made it their own.

I went to my tuition teacher, the one who always helped me with English. I thought he would understand. Instead, he looked at me and said, "Are you the author of this story? You think you have the brains to speak so highly of yourself? Just forget everything that's making you feel great and submit the corrections."

I felt small. Insignificant. Like my experience of myself had no right to exist.

I did what I was told. I made the changes. I submitted. I got good marks.

But the author in me died that day.

I carried that anger for years. And without realising it, that anger quietly became a part of who I was. I told myself English teachers were arrogant. I refused to let them teach me anything. I stayed "dumb" - by choice, by stubbornness, by a revenge so quiet I didn't even notice I had chosen it.

I had decided something about the world: they are the problem, not me. And I lived inside that decision as though it were simply the truth. As though I had no part in it. At 23, I got admission into an MA and then an MPhil in English Literature. I had worked for it, and I got it. But when I did, there was no joy. No real aliveness. I had pursued it not out of love for the subject but to prove that I hadn't lost. The degree was not an expression of who I was - it was a defence. Just more armour over an old wound.

I became a well-acknowledged teacher. People respected me. And yet, somewhere underneath all of it, the joy of learning, the real kind, the kind that 14-year-old girl had when she sat down to write her story was missing.

That loss is something I still feel today. Not loudly, but as a quiet hollow. The ache of spending years with something you love, without ever truly being present with it.

When I finally saw this clearly, I was 25. And what I saw stopped me.

It wasn't my teacher who had kept me small all those years. It was me. I had taken one painful moment and built an entire way of living around it, without ever noticing. I had become the very thing I despised.

The suffering was never really about my teacher. It was about walking through life unaware of the story I was telling myself, and mistaking that story for reality.

When I saw it, I chose to forgive. My teacher, for being harsh. For not seeing that a child's voice is fragile and must be handled with care. And myself for holding on to resentment and calling it justified. For staying stuck and calling it their fault. For all the years I spent protecting the wound instead of healing it.

The peace that came after was not what I expected. It was the return of curiosity. The freedom to not know something and still want to learn it. The quiet joy of being a beginner again without shame, without armour, without needing to prove anything to anyone.

The author in me is finding her way back, happily.

She is no longer asleep.