Often this question comes in my mind. What is my identity? Am I a daughter, a wife, a daughter in law, a mother or a professional? I know these are the roles, some of which I have been playing since my understanding of life and others started sometimes later.

But doesn’t matter every role comes with certain expectations and definitely to fulfill those we have to keep aside other roles for time being. And there are moments in our life when a feeling arises that we are unable to do justice with all the roles simultaneously. And after putting lot of efforts still there is some sort of imbalance resulting into dissatisfaction of others as well as ourselves. And then we feel that we are lost in this game of role playing and sincere urge of introspection arises within us.

It is the high time when we have to sit back, take a deep breath and just take a dive within ourselves.

I remember my childhood days, they were wonderful and I was a very obedient daughter. I was given the best education and environment, and no doubt I performed well in academics, somehow better than all my maternal and paternal cousins. Since I was born after 10 years of my parents’ marriage, I was very precious to them obviously; hence I was brought up in a very over protective environment. Though, my mother always wanted us (me and my sister) to become independent in every sense. We studied in co-education but talking to boys was restricted and boys’ coming to our home was a criminal offence. Going to parties was not at all allowed. As I mentioned I was an obedient child I followed all restrictions; sometimes by force and many a times by choice. And I used to accept my defeat without fighting.

I was a reserve kind of girl with lack of expression, low self-confidence and probably a very low self-esteem. I don’t know exactly what happened and still unable to find out the reason of all these low’s of me. But I feel that I was under an unknown pressure of not becoming a bad child. I always wanted to see my parents happy, may it be at my own cost. I was made to think that I was the reason for their happiness and if I did something which they or the society consider as wrong, I’ll make them unhappy, which again I thought would be a criminal offence; the biggest mistake of my life.

I was brought up in an environment where others happiness is always given priority than our own happiness. Others’ likes and choices are given more importance than ours. No matter what we are sacrificing, how bad we are feeling but if others around us are happy, then we are certainly a good person and vice versa.

So with the same belief system and for my parent’s happiness I entered into a new role of wife and most importantly a daughter-in-law. And with the number of roles the levels of expectations increased resulting into more sacrifices and compromises. The only idea behind all this is to make others happy, which still seems a dream come true. But somewhere in this rat race of pleasing others and winning the trophy I feel I have lost something. I have lost my own self, my identity, my self love, my self-esteem, my purpose of life. And today I am a mother of two lovely kids; I am blessed, happy and fulfilled. But still that same question often knocks my door!