Fatherhood and handling of a girl child: A small autoethnographic account

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Fatherhood and handling of a girl child: A small autoethnographic account 

by

Ankita Majumder


Why my every step has to be approved by you?

Why my word has to have your permission first?

Why my every plan has to be first agreed upon by you?

Why my every decision has be to edited by you?

Why is it that I have to listen to your every command without voicing my thoughts into it?

Why my action has to be viewed by you?

Why the string of my life isn’t in my hands but in yours?

Why father? Why?

I know what you think, you think of me as a girl and an immature girl.

Just because I’m a girl, I can’t go alone?

Just because I’m a girl, I can’t talk to people?

Just because I’m a girl, I can’t walk on road?

Just because I’m a girl, I can’t handle myself?

Why can’t you trust me? Maybe its because of this I have become an overthinker. Whenever I talk to people I am compelled to think a lot.

 

Just because in the past and still now, I’ve to rethink about my words many times before I can speak about it. I have gained this habit of overthinking about everything. Before even asking someone a question I start to think of every possible situation that could occur so that it won’t surprise me or disheartened me much.

 

I can never agree to my friends’ plans before asking for permission from father. It often gets rejected.

 

I can never say yes for the first time to anything as it has to be approved by the father first. I can’t even make my choice of hairstyle just because he doesn’t like it.

I always have wanted to live life with freedom but could never do so as my neck is tightly held from the behind by him. It was as if my arms and legs are tightly tied to a rope. It was as if there were wired connections running through my entire body, the controller of which is in his hands.

He says that he is being worried for me but then why can’t you believe me when I say I can ha
ndle myself? He says he is protecting me then why can’t you understand the fact that your protectiveness is becoming suffocation for me?

Pic: The Soup for WECKER Picasso's blue period (Click here for source)

There were many decisions in my life that I took under his control and then later on I was the one who was blamed for it. Why? You’re the one who forced me to take that decision then why are you now blaming me for taking that decision?

Why does your protective nature make me feel like suffocation now? Is it my age with which I am supposed to enjoy a degree of freedom?


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 Ethnographic Experience


 

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