Tenderness, Not Tolerance!

My cousin had a baby boy today. He stayed with his wife through the entire delivery, held her, supported her in ways that felt quiet but unwavering. I noticed it all.

And then, almost like a different scene entirely, my cousins laughed and said I might never find a man because my standards are “too utopian.” That no guy could handle me. That I’d push people away, that I’m too adamant, too dominant, too much. That I won’t adjust. That I’d probably scold my husband in public.

They speak about me like I’m something difficult to survive, instead of someone waiting to be understood.

And it makes me wonder, in a way I don’t like admitting, what if I never find him? Someone I fall in love with deeply, and who falls just as deeply for me. Someone to build a life with, to have children with, to stand beside when the world decides to be unkind.

Because what I want feels simple when I say it out loud. I want to be loved. I want to be held with a kind of tenderness that doesn’t feel temporary. I want someone who knows me without trying to correct me, who understands me without turning me into a problem to solve. Someone who stands up for me, especially when I’m not in the room.

Even today, it was small things that kept adding up. I wore a shirt and jeans, and my anni, who had just given birth, told me to wear a chudithar tomorrow. I kept thinking, what is so wrong with a shirt?

A chunky ring became a joke. Lipstick became a question. My choices, somehow, became a discussion.

I don’t want a man who controls me. I want a man who stands beside me and says, simply and firmly, that I can be who I am. Someone who doesn’t shrink me so the room feels more comfortable.

Is that too much to ask?

And then there’s this strange ache. If I am someone who feels love this deeply, why does it feel so absent in my own life? Why does it arrive in fragments, like a story that was never fully written?

I keep circling back to the same questions. What did I do wrong? Where did I go wrong?

It hurts to always be the one holding my own ground. There’s a kind of exhaustion in constantly having to defend your own existence.

I don’t want to be the only one on my side all the time.

Because when even my own mother stands with them, or stays silent when she shouldn’t, it doesn’t just sting for a moment. It settles somewhere deeper.

Like something inside me cracks quietly, and I’m the only one who hears it.