Anita,

I thought for a while and honestly I’ve had such a low self-esteem all along that I’d immediately think this is right but now that I try and look at facts a little, I’m sorry but with all due respect, I don’t agree Anita.

– Yes, I talked back with my mother, but I talked BACK. I didn’t start ever. I was never the child called out for being rude, arrogant or disrespectful to her parents on her own accord which I know a lot of my friends were, I’d seen them talk badly to their mother when she kept coming in their room again and again when I and other friends were at their house. I never did anything like that. Yes, what I wasn’t is submissive. I agree I have never been submissive. When my mom scolded me, I’d listen but when she said personal hurtful things, I would talk back. case in point: I would slouch sometimes as a kid, so mom would tell me stand straight, walk straight and I tried but I would then go back to slouching, one day when mom saw I was still slouching, she shouted at me, in front of the governess. ‘Stay like this only all your life’, nothing can happen of yours, look at so and so, when mom’s tell their child once, they listen, look at you, stay like this only, look like this only all your life’. At that point, yes, I would talk back. I would say mom you can’t say that to me, I am trying but don’t say that, okay I will look like this only, you don’t have to worry about me. And I agree that my voice would be loud and my words rude to match that of mom’s. And then mom would be like who talks back to their mother, look at so and so, they are so respectful, I am taking your nature because I am your mom, no one else will’. I know maybe I shouldn’t have talked back, maybe I could stay quiet and respect her more. So I wasn’t submissive, the cousins that my mom compared me to were. They are even today. One of them is in a marriage in a conservative family and she’s making it work exceptionally well because she takes her husband’s behaviour. Mom herself says today that why doesn’t she talk back when he sees how he treats her but then she’s like it’s good at least she makes it work somehow. I know that I couldn’t do what she is doing, I couldn’t clean the toilet only to hear my husband shout at me and tell me where all I haven’t cleaned properly and then stay quiet. I don’t know if that is right or wrong. I think it s wrong. Yes, you can say Anita that I am not very patient, not submissive and not very gentle when repeatedly provoked, but when provoked and repeatedly.

– As I grew up, and now when I confronted my mom, she agreed, my father agreed to not taking a stand for me. Even today mom tells me to do certain things but she doesn’t shout at me like that, also because I live away, but even when I was at their place for the Pandemic, she’d sometimes be annoyed that I slept late or that I didn’t have proper lunch but she doesn’t shout like that anymore and resultantly I have not once been rude or angry at her. Mom and dad today say and show in actions that their life would face an irreparable loss without me.

– My friends. Honestly the one thing that helped me have 1% self esteem left while growing up, it were my friends, right through childhood until now, I have had very healthy relations with all my friends. The two girlfriends I talked about, they are my friends since kindergarten. The two of them don’t really talk much together because they drifted apart but they are both very close with me. My friends today, my friends from college, my colleagues. At work, I have seen so many lash-outs, seniors lashing out at juniors over non-performance, I have never done that. I am one of the only two people at work who still have the same people in their team that they had 3 years ago because in all other teams, people are resigning and being fired. In fact, when I got the promotion, the one that a colleague mocked me about for being because of my physicality, one of the things I’ve always been praised for is my management skills and temperament. These things honestly I hadn’t ever consciously thought of but when I sat back to understand how I am an angry woman, I could not see it. Yes, I do have crippling self-doubt and so when anyone tells me, anyone so far being only my mom and ex, I do start doubting myself but the only reason that I fight back despite the doubt is because When I look at facts, I don’t see myself as being that. I don’t see myself as having a bad nature the way mom always said, yes I believed it for the longest time but when I think back, it factually never adds up. If I am so bad natured, how come I have the oldest friendships and the closest bonds when many of my friends have fought and parted ways? If I was bad natured as mom said, why today did she agree to being wrong, why did dad agree to not standing up for me. They still have fights among themselves so its not that a they have become different human beings but their conduct to me has changed.

– My assistant. I have the same assistant since the last 3 years, ever since I started working at my current company and she is more like a friend now. She always tells me how I never made her feel like an assistant and how I’d not shouted at her when she did so and so. We now laugh about all the times when she’d supposedly screw up and we’d go on fixing drive. Most of my colleagues vent out, shout and put down their assistants.

– My ex. After my mother, my ex is the only one that I had fights, arguments with. These are the only two people in life I have had arguments with. I know they are the closest to me and so my inner self comes out the most but with neither of them have I been irritable/name-calling which both of them have been to me. Yes, I stood up to them. Yes I agree that I didn’t take my mom’s scolding quietly, I dint take my bf’s neglecting me quietly. I speak up, I have always spoken up and my fault was that instead of realising that I should have been quiet after my speaking up had no effect, I went down to shouting, begging and crying. Yes I have been argumentative. Yes I have doubted if I am the problem because I did argue back and did not stay quiet when I saw my bf lying to me that he is at work when he was partying with his friends, I don’t have the knowledge and maturity to know that when someone pokes me, someone very close to me pokes me and don’t pay any heed when I say it hurts me, I should disengage. Instead I try and do anything to make them see they are hurting me. case in point, my ex as I think I’ve said before too would be all nice and everything and would suddenly start becoming busy. I’d be like okay, but then I’d see his friends social media posts and stories that he is out partying with friends and family and I’d feel bad, I’d call him try and talk, he’d be like it was one day rest I am very swamped can’t talk right now, but when I’d see that he is having time for everything but me, yes, one day I would lose my calm and call him repeatedly until he answered, I would tell him why is he doing this and I saw he is doing this and this and if I hold no importance why is he with me, how can he call me his life and treat me like this and he’d call me clingy, nagging, irritable and I’d argue back and he’d shout at me and I’d cry and in the last one year he’s then start name-calling and verbally abusing me. If I were angry, I would abuse him back, I have never Done that. Through the 5 years, I have never ever name-called him, verbally used abusives, or put him down even when he did. Yes, I have been argumentative. Yes I have spoken up when I feel I was being wronged and maybe I have been more emotional. Maybe some other girl must have been like cool he doesn’t want to talk to me I’ll go have my own fun, yes I couldn’t be that girl, I went after him, I wanted him to give me the importance that I felt I gave to him and that was deserved to me as a girlfriend but I wasn’t angry. He himself would say in our good times how its amazing that I am chilled out with him being friends with one of his exes, how he likes I am not the crazy jealous types.

So no, Anita, it is true I was not submissive, I stood up for myself when I felt wrong and my way of standing up might be wrong, I should said said once and disengaged but it wasn’t so easy, this was my mother and the man I wanted to marry, I couldn’t just disengage so I did argue, I did say you can’t wrong me like this, I was argumentative, I was a cry-baby, I was nagging and clingy maybe but I was not angry, I was hurt. With my closed ones with whom I have an equal relation, who don’t insult me or put me down, I have very good relations. Even with my father, he wronged me but because he wasn’t directly shouting insulting at me, I never spoke in any bad way with him, he has always on his own said that I have been a good daughter to him, yes, I felt wronged by him not standing up but had I been angry girl, I would be out there being bad with him.  Even now, see, in the last one year, when my ex kept calling, I didn’t call him anything bad even once, I was hurt, I was disrespected but not once, I would be quiet because I learnt that my talking back and arguing will not do anything, I texted don’t contact me but not once did I say anything abusive. My ex, he called me stupid, verbally abused me when I rejected him, asked me to keep my idiocy to myself and said I am a child. I have taken a lot from both my mom and my ex and an angry woman would have broken ties with them, an angry girl would have been easily slighted, easily irritated, I wasn’t. I’d listen until it became very personal and then I’d argue. I have seen enough easily irritable, angered people in my life to know that I am so not one of them. Yes I WAS A HURT CHILD AND A HURT GIRLFRIEND and I am making the distinction because had I been angry, I think I would have become irritable, I would be lashing out at being even little slighted, I would have become aggressive arrogant and been short tempered but I wasn’t. I was hurt, and so I became self-doubting, a little quieter as a personality and more than shouting, I would cry and beg. It was my mom herself who said that I don’t even stand up t my bf anymore, I just cry.  I was a hurt child/gf Anita, I think, not an angry one. Honestly I’d been happier to be the angry one, it’d be better if I could just yell and insult and go around thinking as if I am the boss of the world, which is what I feel maybe my ex now thinks rather than being left as the crying begging woman who keeps spinning in self-doubt.

I know I am many things Anita, but after all the little work that I have tried doing on myself in the last one year with reading and de-clouding my life’s narrative off what my mom and my ex kept telling me and instead seeing facts, I can for once say that I was not an angry child/girlfriend. I was a hurt child/girlfriend, not an angry one. We do use them interchangeably but I think they are not  the same.

I am sorry Anita if any of this sounds rude, I know I’m getting defensive but I did think hard all day yesterday about it and tried to look at the truth, trust me I have the highest regard for you, you are helping me so much but this is just something I felt and thought I could say it to you. But feel free to say what you feel. If I am missing something, I’d like to see that. I’d await your reply.

Love

Jenny