Preparing an essay on feminism I came across something which made me thinking, well, a lot of thinking happened after this. Nothing new, right? That is usually me, who keeps thinking on anything and everything.
So this is what I read today, a simple description on how women are depressed and what Friedan writes-
“I’ve tried everything women are supposed to do- hobbies, gardening, pickling, canning, being very social with my neighbours, — I can do it all, and I like it, but it doesn’t leave you anything to think about- any feeling of who you are. I never had any career ambitions. All I wanted was to get married and have four children. I love the kids and Bob and my home. There’s no problem you can even put a name to. But I am desperate. I begin to feel I have no personality. I am a server of food and a putter-on of pants and a bedmaker; somebody who can be called on when you want something. But who am I?”
I read a lot of things today, a lot which struck my mind and touched me but this dug something deep in my sub conscious mind.
That feeling, where you are absolutely helpless, when you don’t know what to do; when you question your own identity; that is absolutely depressing. And I do not have the courage to live with it. The point is I don’t ever want to have that kind of courage.
What would be the point of my life if I have to question my own identity?
You would say, why abruptly I am thinking so much, and why the question of identity? Nothing is wrong with my life, but this moved deep chords inside me.
I have never been too ambitious, no I won’t say I had no ambitions, I don’t even want too much from my life. No, I don’t want to get married and have four children, maybe I don’t even want to get married at all. May be I don’t even know what exactly do I want. But I just don’t want this feeling- the feeling of being desperate, the feeling that you can’t even name your problem, I don’t want to be that person who loses her personality, who just becomes a person who can be called on.
I cannot begin to think what it would be like to live where you don’t have anything to think about. Can you imagine, me, having nothing to think about?
I have always said, I have unending questions, that I am seeking answers, that I am searching for myself. This I can live with, a quest that might not end, where I am still searching for myself. But I might not be able to live with the question, “Who am I?” It is not even about living with that question. I don’t ‘want’ to ever live with that question.
Moushmi Radhanpara 
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