its 6:10am

Dear Dad,

I thought of many ways to write this letter, but in my head over and over I would always start repeating myself. So I thought the best way was to speak from my heart. Therefore I am going to do that. I haven’t been doing so good in school lately maybe it was the transition. But this semester I truly found out who I am. And why I couldn’t get straight A’s in the first place. It’s because of you. I know I say this a lot of times but you never listen so I hope you listen this time, before my whole life is ruined or I might cause more pain than I would have never imagined.

All I am saying is that I deserve a chance to be me; I deserve to be the person that I am meant to be. Not someone that you want me to be. I tried to be someone I am not for the last 18 years, because I wanted you to be happy. But it never worked cause I ended up hating who I was and I never succeeded in anything I did. The main reason I cry all the time is not because you yelled at me and the things you said were mean. The reason I cry so much is that I can never be perfect enough for you, there is always something wrong, like the way I walk, the way I dress, the way my face has acne, I don’t have white teeth, my neck is so black, my feet are black, I never drink enough milk, I am so fat and can never look as pretty as all the other Indian girls. Do you know how it hurts when you say all those things to me, I know you are doing this for my own good but you have gone too far. Cant you tell I am not like all those Indian girls that are perfect and obedient, that’s because I have different interests. And no matter where I go I can only be me. You might say don’t do this or don’t do that but I have to learn on my own what I can and can’t do. You can’t control my life all the time because you are not me, you don’t know how I think or what I see. There are so many people in this world you have to see beyond your scope and look at other people, because in the end it matters what you want not what your parents want. You can suggest me things but ultimately I make the decisions and I live with the consequences. You might say that’s why you tell me not to so certain things but I have to find out why I can’t do it. All this time I feel like I have been trapped in this cage, a cage made by you, where I have to be so fake. And I have thought about suicide so much cause I never amount to what you want me to be, and I cant be happy if you’re not happy that’s why I did this for so long, but then I realized I can never be what you want me to be. I have to make mistakes to find out myself, I have to go out into the real world and see how people are. And I know you always say I have been here so many years but that doesn’t mean that you have seen every single person. And you can’t judge people just by their occupation or their jobs or their academic history. You judge a person by their heart, by their character. And I have not seen 1 person in the Indian community that isn’t shallow about other people. That’s why I never interact with other people in parties because all they judge you on is what college you go to, what job do you have, and how good you look. I think people who judge you like that are shallow and they can’t see goodness in other people. There are so many people who have a good heart and they not engineers or scientists or Doctors.

Another thing I have to mention in this letter is that do you know how much pressure you put on me. Pressure is good but too much pressure can cause a person to explode. For example take me. Every time I failed a test I would want to die, that’s how serious it was. Every time I would get a bad grade I wanted to die. One day in class I was sitting there when people got good scores on their paper and I didn’t. The whole class period I wrote I am worthless to fill the whole paper. You make me feel so worthless that sometimes I wish I wasn’t born. And I would like to remind you these are my thoughts and they have been in my head for almost 18 years. So when you get mad think about what you say and how I might take it because one day I told you why were You and mom married and why did you make me. And that day you said don’t say that. But the next day when something bad happened you said “….  And you ask stupid questions like why did u get married” did u know how much it hurt when you said that. You only thought about it for the most an hour, but it’s almost been a year now and I still remember it. Not only do I remember that I remember so many things that you said in the past even when I was in preschool, High School and now college. You told me to write two pages and I only wrote half a page, and I left a note saying “ Sorry I cant write tow pages” and I spelled the word two wrong and you hit me so many times for not spelling it right. After that there have been so many things that you did that stick in my head and they will probably stick in my head forever.

Now that I have spoken so much about me, lets consider you. I know you want your daughter to be successful but there are many ways to being successful and happy. Whenever you say I am going to take away everything from me like my financial aid and admissions and send me to RCC or India I will still be the same person not someone else. So the whole point of this letter is to please stop controlling my life. This is my life not yours and the decisions I make I will live with them. I know this is a lot to ask for but if you want we can go to counseling I have been going there a lot of times and I know you think counseling is for crazy people but it helps out a lot of people. I ask you again to please think about what I wrote in this letter, and stop thinking in a narrow way. Think about how you would feel if you were me.