Confessions logo

The Real Me

All the things I can never tell you

By Maahi TrivediPublished 2 years ago 15 min read
Like
The Real Me
Photo by Scott Graham on Unsplash

Hey Mom.

It took me a while to start writing this letter. There is so much I want to tell you that I didn’t really know where to begin, but here it goes.

I owe you an apology. I am your daughter, your only child, and sometimes it hurts me to think how little you actually know of my life. On the surface we seem close. I suppose in a way we are. We speak on the phone almost every day and share accounts about everything (well, most things in my case) that we did, and yet there are still so many details I hide from you, that I am anxious about revealing and unsure of your reaction to even at the age of 27.

On paper, I had an almost perfect childhood. Only child to parents who were reasonably well off, attended one of the best schools in the city, had everything I could ask for really. I recognize my privilege and I will be forever grateful. You raised me to believe that honesty is one of our most precious virtues and I proudly upheld that until a certain point. I can’t exactly pinpoint where it all changed, but I suspect it had a lot to do with how I started viewing you as I grew older.

Growing up, I always categorized you as a strict parent, but I just assumed that’s how most parents, especially Indian parents, are. You would scold me for seemingly silly things, and sometimes the whole honesty thing would really backfire on me and get me in trouble, but I continued undeterred anyway, thinking that’s just how moms were. I did start to realize that there were certain things I could not share easily with you, like when I had a crush on a boy in the 6th grade and instead of understanding and explaining to me that it's only natural, you chided me and said I was way too young to be thinking about boys and you don’t want to hear this again. So how could I come to you then, when this boy didn’t return my feelings and his friends would mock me? Would you have understood? Try and make me feel better and give me a lesson in self-worth? Even 11-year-old me knew that would never happen and so it went unmentioned.

Slowly, I started hiding more things from you. In school it was mostly silly stuff, like when I got a bad grade on an exam or had a falling out with a friend. Honestly, I never trusted you to be on my side in any situation and looking back, that’s an awful way to live for a very confused teenager. I don’t really believe today that you meant for me to feel that way; maybe I was terribly wrong and you'd have been fantastic had I confided in you. But by that time, the damage was done, only to be solidified when I went to college.

I’m not exaggerating when I say college completely transformed me as a person. Up until that point, I had lived an extremely sheltered, privileged and almost predictable life. I was meant to be a doctor and was surrounded by like-minded peers who had grown up with almost the same lifestyle and values as me. My one and maybe only act of rebellion was to completely refuse to walk the medicine path; I wanted to be a pastry chef and that was that. To your credit, you did see the passion and commitment I had and supported me, this one time, and for a while I saw hope. But when I actually started my college classes and the very small bubble I had been living in finally popped after 18 years, there was no going back.

Here was this whole new world that I had no idea existed. People from every background, different cities, some much less privileged than me. I didn’t know experiencing culture shock within your own city was even possible but experience it I did, and wow, was it amazing! It opened my eyes and broadened my mind, cheesy as it sounds, but unfortunately you were still where you always where, in the safe embrace of that bubble that I now knew had been blinding me this whole time. In the beginning, I really did try to make you a part of my journey. It was with simple things at first, permissions for going out at night, attending a party here and there, sharing with you all the new friends I was making and the new things I was learning every day. But I could see you struggling to get on board with it; these new friends didn’t meet your approval, maybe because they came from all over and you couldn’t really relate to their upbringing. Many, rather, most of them were boys because that’s what culinary school is. It is a fairly male dominated industry and out of my class of 75 students, just 11 were girls. I couldn’t help but get to know these boys better, and mom, they were all incredible people. But you only saw their gender, and I understand my safety was a concern to you, but you never seemed to trust my judgement. I get it, I was a stupid teenager, but these boys would offer to come meet you, get your full approval, pick me up from home and drop me off, but it was always a resounding NO. No going out late at night, no going out alone with a boy even if he is just a friend, no parties, nothing. I acknowledge I sound like a whiny baby right now, but at the time you can imagine how frustrating it might have been for someone who had recently discovered a whole new world and a new side to themselves.

I had been a fairly good kid throughout school and had never defied you or dad. To tell you the truth, I was scared of you. Scared to ask your permission for a lot of things my friends were allowed to do, scared of being caught if I lied and did it anyway, and most of all, scared of disappointing you. But when it came to college, I was done. Now I wanted to live my life exactly how I wanted. Yet, disappointing you still terrified me and asking for permission was not an option and so the lying began.

I suppose in the beginning I felt terribly guilty about it. You trusted me to be honest because you had raised me to be and had no reason to believe otherwise. In essence I was misusing this faith in me and it really hurt my conscience at times. That changed though, when I fell in love.

I want to just say here, at this point my self-esteem when it came to boys and feeling attractive was at an all-time low. All I had faced in the past was rejections, with the feeling of never being good enough fueled with you telling me often that no boy will like me unless I lose some weight. (You still say this to me and thankfully I know better now, but man did I take it to heart as a kid). So when I went to college and discovered I was desirable after all, it was honestly liberating.

It was rocky for a bit there. I hadn't had this much male attention ever in my life before (mostly also because there were such few girls to begin with, but let's not dwell on that!) and the validation felt good. Too good. I attained a bit of a reputation for a while, of being a flirt and even some worse things. Yes, I loved the attention and flirted back, but at that point I was still terrified of actually dating. I knew I could never tell you because you wouldn’t let me anyway, and the thought of going on a date and you finding out was pretty scary. My first boyfriend, poor guy, I only said yes because I was so flattered that someone was into me that I didn’t even stop to consider that I wasn’t into HIM. I'd find excuses not to go out with him and turned away when he tried to kiss me. This was to be my first kiss, finally, after 18 long years, after hearing stories from my friends from their school days about their experiences and feeling left out. I desperately wanted to share all of this with you and make sense of all of these emotions. Of course, I had my friends but how much can another teenager help? They have their own mess to sort through and don’t know any better either. So I did my best, broke up with that guy and continued to soak in all the attention from the others.

In my second year, this bout of flirting brought me to M. Here was this guy who sat just a few seats away, who I had dismissed initially because you would have never approved and thought him beneath me. My conditioning made me instantly reject him, even as a friend. But a year into college, I was already better. All that truly mattered to me now was how someone is as a person. And to me, M was fantastic.

This was my first (and only) REAL relationship. M had had a rough childhood and had been through a lot, something that was very hard for me to relate to. But I was in love and I tried my best to be there for him. He did the same for me. We were young and in love and I don’t think there can be a better feeling. Again, I wanted to tell you so so bad mom. All the good, yes, how it felt to hold his hand under the bench in class, how he always made me laugh, how magical it was when we kissed. He and I shared everything with each other and I admired his resilience after everything he had been through. I wanted to tell you all this, that I've found a guy, maybe not the perfect one but one that makes me so happy I could cry. More than the good stuff though, I longed to tell you about our fights. There were countless times when I needed your advice, when only someone who had years of experience in a relationship could help. I had grown up joking that I would never date someone like dad, especially because he is a Virgo and I hate Virgos. Well guess what, M was a Virgo and so much like dad in many ways! I used to find it equal parts hilarious and frustrating and I wish we could have laughed about it together and you could have guided me in dealing with certain personality traits of his, and clashes I had with him.

There are so many things I did during those years of college and dating M that you have no idea about. Maybe you suspected I was seeing someone, but we never really talked about it. The amount of alcohol I've consumed, cigarettes and weed I've smoked, nights I’ve spent under twinkling stars with M on the rooftop of our building, parties I’ve gone to after saying I’m going to a friend’s to do an assignment, just countless things really. In hindsight I was stupid, reckless even. But back then, it was the most exhilarating phase of my life. I had never felt so free, so me and so HAPPY. But I had to hide it all from you, of course you would have never let me do all this if I had asked, it was a no brainer and I wasn’t going to bother anymore. There were some near misses, times when you almost found out and I swear, I have never been more scared. A professor in college once caught M and I making out in a classroom and it was nothing short of a scandal. He wanted to call you in to rat me out but I somehow convinced him not to. Man, I don’t even want to think about what would have happened. The scolding and yelling would have been fine; the letting you down and massive guilt trip not so much.

After graduation, I wanted to study abroad and again, full credit to you guys for making that dream come true. I moved from Mumbai to Toronto to experience another new world all over again. M moved here a few months after me too, and you knew him as a friend of mine and that he would be living in the same apartment as me, but we also shared a room. Yes, I lived in with my boyfriend for over 2 years in Canada mom. It was always funny to me how opposed you were to live-in relationships, and I believe it had a lot to do with your notions on pre-marital sex. Obviously, you don’t have to live with someone to sleep with them and besides, I lost my virginity at 19, so it didn’t matter anyway. But again, I wanted to tell you this, what it's like for me to live with him, to navigate new problems in our relationship that came with that change, to more wonderful things I learned about him like how much he would take care of me after a long day of work and how nice it was to just have someone always in your corner.

Wonderful as M was, we did have some major differences in ideologies and how we saw our futures. A couple years into living together, we decided it was best to part ways as a couple and just stay friends. Rationally, it was the right decision, but of course, I was devastated. This was someone who I had poured my soul out to in the last 4 years. He knew everything about me, the worst of me and had still loved me. I’m afraid I had never truly learned to love myself even after all this time, and the break up hit me hard. What if no one else would ever love me again? What if I had lost the best thing that had ever happened to me? To make things worse, this came right around the time the pandemic hit and I was stuck with no distractions. It was rough mom. I used to cry myself to sleep, I had started drinking way too much and just wasn’t able to cope. My friends tried to be understanding in the beginning but they didn’t fully get how hard I had taken the break up. To them it was a mutually planned and amicable one and so I should have been okay. When I wasn’t, they started to lose patience. I don’t blame them, they are amazing and love me very much, but I was acting out a lot, was drunk too often and they had their own problems going on. What I needed again, was you. But how could I NOW come to you? After lying all these years about everything? So I didn’t and I have never felt so alone as I did during that time.

I cleaned up though, sort of. I started seeing a therapist, another thing I could never tell you because you would just dismiss the need for one and see it as a weakness. Indians don’t believe in therapy, do they? Depression is an excuse to be lazy and unmotivated. At least, that’s how I believed you would see it, or worse, you would ask me why I needed a therapist and that wasn’t something I could answer. So it just joined the long list of things you didn’t know about my life.

That brings us to today. I’m not quite as guarded with you now, because of course, I’m older and live alone and have frankly reached a stage where I’m not as scared of you anymore. But I fear that something between us has been destroyed forever. You know it too, deep down, that we can never be as close as you wish for. You know I hide things from you and that I can never fully open up. I was always terrible at showing my emotions, I thought crying makes you seem weak to others. I have barely even cried in front of you, even as a child. I genuinely wish I could though, just sob one day in your arms and tell you this, all of it, and ask you to be there. Even though I live alone, make my own money and am half a world away from you, I still find the need to lie. I don’t tell you when I go on dates with guys from dating apps, I don’t correct you when you tell me no guy will be attracted to me till I'm skinnier, that I know how untrue that is based on my experience, that some days when you call, I just don’t want to talk and so I pretend I was asleep or busy, that I actually might be in love again. I wish I could change this, there is no need any more and I can choose to be truly myself. But something always stops me and I don’t think its fixable.

I still do love you very much mom. There was resentment once, for when I felt I was compelled to lie. But it was the choice I made and it's on me. Maybe someday I’ll be able to share this letter with you. But then again, maybe not.

Secrets
Like

About the Creator

Maahi Trivedi

A 20-something baker trying to navigate her scattered emotions by typing them out online!

Reader insights

Be the first to share your insights about this piece.

How does it work?

Add your insights

Comments

There are no comments for this story

Be the first to respond and start the conversation.

Sign in to comment

    Find us on social media

    Miscellaneous links

    • Explore
    • Contact
    • Privacy Policy
    • Terms of Use
    • Support

    © 2024 Creatd, Inc. All Rights Reserved.