Being an Outcast
It is my journey of coming of age; it’s a saga of being an outcast and yet creating a niche in a land I now call my home. It’s my story of growing up defunct, battling abuse and defeating depression.
I had many hurdles in life, like everybody else, and I will elaborate on those hurdles later in my narrative, but some life-changing incidents redefined me in ways I never thought possible, especially as a woman. I have blurred recollection of me growing up in Kathmandu, my supposed homeland, but what is vivid in those scant blurred memories is the influential positivism our father instilled in us. They remain vivid and valid because I did not let his words of wisdom fade even after all these years since his untimely and unexpected demise when my twin and I were just six years old. Maybe I remember dad’s words distinctly because we were meant to remember whatever he said to us during his short time spent with us, or maybe because I later got to read his dairy and those words got reinforced in my brain. Dad used to talk to us a lot when we were little. He used to tell us stories and sing us lullabies. I remember those stories and lullabies. Those stories used to have some take home message. That was dad’s way of imparting wisdom into our little minds.
In our tender hearts, somehow, the shattering news of dad’s untimely death refused to sink in for a long long time. I don’t remember the exact point in time when it dawned on me, but it didn’t take me long to comprehend the uncanny and faltering enormity of growing up fatherless girls and how the people around us predominantly ruled our household to behave in ways conducive only to them. Huge part of how defunct my childhood shaped up to be is heavily guided by how our mother had to fend for herself to bring us up, succumbing and reacting to undue and unwelcomed pressure from the relatives, neighbors and her own assumptions of what others would say/think looking down on a widow with three daughters and not a single son. Ours was a household with no male presence, yet patriarchal dominance resounded from every single decision mum would seek validation for from male relatives only to crush independence and emotional stability we so longed for.
I remember like it was only yesterday, how an inquisitive girl in me got terrifyingly silenced by the expectations from the world around me, expectations to never be apprehensive of traditions and culture, especially as a girl, which were profoundly celestial but utterly unfathomable and disturbing to a rebellion in me. Me questioning and refuting the exile treatment to untouchables like damai, kami, saarki just because of their lineage, me refusing to tread on bare floor and being handed food like to an alien every month when Aunty Flow served her cycle, all these made me an eye sore for many relatives and a source of embarrassment for my devout religious mother. Shedding my shell of shyness and carving up my individuality became my mission, and later, my unclaimed trophies. I took upon myself to let go of the shell by partaking in school’s extracurricular activities that exposed me to stand up for myself and represent my class; I started voicing my strong opinions nonchalantly which my friends easily accommodated as jokes and hence I became an expert in hiding my pain and being inadvertently rebellious. It was astounding how in those taut system where success was measured in percentage secured in exams and not in cognizance; knowledge gauged in best textbook answers and not in expansion; wisdom ascertained in highbrows and not in cultivated experiences that I found myself unknowingly nose-diving into the opposite spectrum.
I left Nepal in my early teenage years after schooling, to study further in UK, only to return shortly to get married as a teenager. I was darting between London and newly allocated “home” in Nepal as my then husband and his family still resided in Nepal.Juggling between studies and balancing out stark differences in those early years of an estranged conjugal life where male dominance was prevalent and infidelity was a normalcy, I found malleability confronting and constraining.
In an attempt to smoothen out mismatched mindsets and ideologies on love, commitment and priorities, I chose to forgive his dismal philandering when I gave birth, on the brim of an uncertain fate. I wanted to grow as an individual and let him do the same. That’s all I asked for. Nothing, not even a conventional marriage and its tyrannical realm could hold me back from voicing my opinions and being myself. Unfair demands of a “fake divorce” just so my then husband could get a visa for overseas when our baby was only 17 days old, constant lectures from his family about how naïve I was about male dominance and interference, restrictions to visit my maternal home, constraints of not being allowed to hum or sing in the household or to be seen eating together with my then husband or any display of affection, however short-lived they were, illogical reasons for his infidelity, all these were brewing a volcano inside me day by day. I’m not sure whether I was born a rebel or whether I became one, but I found myself being stifled and repressed. Without outlining too many intricate details, I can now say, in retrospect, that we both knew from the very start that everything in that relationship further created chasms in our partnership which was right up to the cliff of a rolling boulder at that stage. We even went on to stretch out our already strained relationship in a hope of bringing up our son with opportunities when we finally stepped onto the embrace of Australia, this time together, as his previous fake divorce and visa to other country got rejected.
Things only got worse once him and I moved to Australia. My social network in Sydney was intertwined with his. It wouldn’t be an exception to say it felt like I almost grew up knowing his side of the story and his side of the network for a very significant chunk of time. It was all haywire. I needed to discover and refine my own story after eight torturous years of dragging a hollow relationship. I wonder if anyone had any inkling about my unsuccessful attempts to salvage my failing relationship for so many years. Eight years is a long time to put up with unhappiness. Eight years is a long time to drain your efforts into a bottomless pit. I finally had the courage to give in. Being a woman, I dared to put a stop to illogical accusations, multi-faceted abuses which came in the form of social defamation and boycotting, psychological dominance and open ruthless insults, verbal threatening, emotional blackmailing, conjugal deprivation, financial restrictions etc. Being a woman I dared to stand up against violence. I became an outcast overnight; outcast from my own family and his for daring to do unthinkable, outcast from Nepali Australian community for having betrayed my wedding vows of eternal love.
That day when I was nearly strangled to death and had to choose between death and lifelong wrath, I chose life full of resentment towards me. That day, I also learnt, being a woman with courage is perceived as a travesty of our ingrained Nepali culture. Suddenly, my Nepali-ness was undone and stripped off from me overnight just because I chose to provide my child with a positive and non-aggressive environment, because I chose to have dignity and self-worth rather than preconceived notion of togetherness until death.
Instead of genuine concerns for my wellbeing and instead of trying to find out reasons why I took such drastic measures, the unimaginable resentment, abandonment and wrath I was shown by the Nepali community was far from stupendous. When I needed to seek some protection and trauma counselling, I had no one to turn to, none of the so called Nepali friends or relatives would want to be associated with me anymore after the news broke out. Most unwelcomed and shattering experience was that of a Nepali well -wisher who spitted on me for raising alarm against domestic abuse because according to them I was supposed to tolerate everything as an obedient and meek gender as per our Nepali culture.
What boggled me was not their benumbing and callous treatment towards me, it was their mindsets of victim-blaming which they still carried around even after leaving their conservative homeland that perturbed me more. My choice certainly did not discount his non-abusive valid points. What liberated me, affected him and Nepalese society in large. What I didn’t choose was the need for reprisal. I chose to rise above the reprisal, above the expected norm of Nepali tradition, above the rat race and definition of success in Nepali terms. I chose to be happy and alive from that day.
When I decided to separate myself from that long-term, rocky, self-loathing, unhealthy and abusive relationship, I was aware I would be labeled incorrigible and judged and that my budding career as a registered nurse would take a back seat due to readjustments both professionally and personally. I had no family to back me up or to support me in that unknown territory back then. What I wasn’t aware of, however, was the unending struggle to overcome bouts of depression caused by traumatic experiences I had gone through those eight years. What I wasn’t aware of was the repercussions manifested as abandonment from the Nepali Australian community. As the days of full- time-working single -mum stretched, the mental trauma and anxiety loomed large and reared its ugly head more often than I had ever imagined.
My son saw me scared and bruised, he saw me fight with zeal to rise up and protect ourselves, he saw my loneliness and struggles. My son saw and understood things far beyond his age. If I wanted to give him happiness, I needed to be happy myself. I chose to not let others decide what happiness meant for us. I started living life au courant on my own terms.
I changed nursing specialties and jobs to keep up with my child’s school terms so it aligned in safe harmony and legal boundaries of how long a child could be left alone in a country where child negligence is countered as a crime. Leaving my sobbing child in the boundary of a child care every day for number of years, knowing inside that he wouldn’t eat or take a nap until he saw his mum’s face in the silhouette after hard day’s work, left me feeling gutted for many years to come. I had to oblige by the law, I had to be strong and be the sole bread winner. I had to be the mum and the dad to my child who had no other family members in near vicinity. How we both plodded along to strengthen our bond not just as a mother and son, but also as best friends, is only imaginable.
I am forever grateful to all those changes in jobs that came as a hidden boon to accumulate varied skills and specialties I required to overstep the professional hierarchy. On my son’s beaming face, I found the determination to carry on every day; in my patients’ gratitude I found sublime reasons to help change lives; to help create better community, I found myself facilitating, guiding and teaching university students. Had I not had the exposure to such vast array of skills, contingent due to my readjustments as a single mum, I would normally have to wait for many years before I could even forage into the domain of educating nursing staffs and students. I found my benchmark through my resilience and turning my sufferings into niche in this foreign land where the position I now hold that of a Hospital Staff Educator and a University Facilitator guiding, educating and teaching Master’s and Bachelor level nursing students, is only reserved for select few senior professionals or scholarly locals. It is still held challenging to a young professional, rightly so for the migrants of Nepali origin. I am proud of who I turned out to be despite my debilitating experiences in the past. I still cannot perceive whether my fatherless childhood or my being a woman and daring to vehemently rebel against the abuse led to unprecedented tragic emotions and events in my life but I have managed to resurface every single time and collect all my broken pieces together to create a beautiful mosaic that I now fondly look at. Unknowingly, I had gathered my strengths and learnt many lessons on survival from my mum along those years. Looking back, her struggle as a widow was hardly any different than my struggle as a single mum in a foreign land. There were minor differences though, enough to call them minor, vast enough to call them different. Mum never went through abuse and physical violence. Mum had her social support at least in the form of her mum and dad and sisters who lived close by to help her out with her three fatherless kids. I, on the other hand, had no social network apart from my European best friend who, although couldn’t help out with child-minding, provided motherly support and guidance to me in desperate times of self-loathing and times when I wanted to give up on life. We both, however, had to battle it out on our own. We both turned our education into our livelihood and took our own advices to stay calm and focused. We both fended off unnecessary attentions on our own, we both were scared for our safety and lived each day at a time. I don’t think I could ever imagine anyone else to be my ideal and strength.
I’ve learnt to battle my demons within. It was not easy at all, but giving up wasn’t an option for me. I had to be strong for my son and for myself. I wanted to live to be able to be my son’s confidante when life throws its tantrums and clumsy uncouth fangs at him when he is an adult. This is my story.
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