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Dear Men/Women,
No, wait.
Scratch that.

Dear People,

You grew up too quickly
Saw things that shook you more than you knew,

It was the way you were raised that phased you,

Too heavy, too hard, beaten down, left with a few scars.

God, of course, your emotions will hit you like a truck!

You’ll love like you’re dying.

Care like you’re still trying,

Maybe you just want to go back to being a kid,

Wanting things to be like they are supposed to be,

In dreams, books, fairy tales,

Easy, Peaceful, Understandable,

Fiction.

I am a feminist, a voice for the unheard, a supporter of human rights, a woman myself, but also a person, and in our virtual war to win, to somehow prove that we are the deserving,  the ‘superior’ gender. Somewhere along the road, we forgot that we are all, after all, humans. Beneath our differences, behind the mask of our macho-ness, we have the same fears, the same insecurities and we live in the very same, very harsh world. A world we survive every day, together.

The same time the little girl was told that this society had restrictions for her, then she heard for the first time “tum tou larki ho”, the little boy was sent out alone into the world, it was the first time he heard “tum tou larkay ho”.

It wasn’t me or you that shaped our minds into believing there was an undeniable difference, it was the norms of our society. The same time a hard-working girl who had done everything to achieve that seat in a medical college was told she didn’t deserve it, it was a waste. The boy was pushed into the reality of this world and was told he was expected to support a household, a family, for the rest of his life.

Maybe somehow, somewhere our society tried so hard to raise us as different individuals, to encode our differences into our bloodstream, that it forgot we were after all just, just children. We had the same small little dreams of trying to change the world, of trying to make it a better place, maybe if they hadn’t entangled us in our differences so much, we just might have achieved it.

I’ll tell you something that we do have in common though, something that we will forever have in common. We will always be survivors.

So, if you’re reading this, take a deep breath and look around. You have survived your entire life, until this point. Every failure, every heartbreak, every lost friendship. You have survived traumas, devastation and all those phases of life that you thought would never end. That you thought would be the end of you. You’ve survived sleepless nights, and hopeless days and those times that you felt like you couldn’t breathe. You have sat in a room full of people with a crying heart and managed to smile. You’ve survived stress that felt like it was crushing your soul. You’ve lost and you’ve learned. And look at you. Still standing, still here.

So dear people,
Not so different after all? Eh?