Being a teenage girl in a Baloch house isn’t easy. You have many responsibilities and you carry the house’s “Honor”. So, everything you do if it is wrong in society’s belief, you will get punished but twice the amount because you are a girl a Baloch girl.
Being a girl here means no social media and no talking to anyone your father didn’t approve of and he keeps a track of everything you do – also no sense of privacy.
I fell in love with a boy about whom I kept a secret, no one other than my sister knew of. About a year later, my parents found out about it. They gave me that disgusted look and started saying “they were ashamed of me”, “wish they never had me”, death threats and along the lines, he had also said he couldn’t wait to get rid of me.
I believed if it were my brother who did this, he would have it way easier because he was at the advantage of being a boy who always had his rights and freedom.
They made me hate myself and mentally tortured me. My only escape would be cutting my skin and making myself feel the pain so that it would distract me from all the bad thoughts and their words. They made me feel like killing myself was a better option.
After they found out, not too long later I broke up with him. I spent way too many nights crying, and feeling worthless. I was a teenager so it was easy for their words to affect me. I believed their words when they called me everything.
Not too long after that, I had my exams where I had failed two subjects to which their reaction I remember vividly raising his hand at me calling me a disappointment and disowning me – which was one more reason for me to think I was better off dead.
He brought my relationship with the guy again and shouted at me saying “You dumb worthless girl, I told you to break up why the hell didn’t you”. I told him I broke up but, of course, he did not believe that because he thinks he knows better and had thought I lied to him. I knew not to argue with him because otherwise, he would have beaten me.
That was the moment I had realized how to my own father, other’s satisfaction mattered more than his daughter’s happiness. He is a man who always wants society to think good of him. And if the people who have found out about my relationship, he imagines would’ve had its downfall. Those moments I had believed it wasn’t for his image, he would’ve kicked me out.
To this day those events replay in my head again and again. I’ve thought too many times about how it was easy for them to turn their backs on me and not talk to me and ignore me like I didn’t exist. They would talk at the dinner table and ignore me and almost every day I see the scars I have given myself because of them.
I did try to kill myself two times but failed both times. I, to this day, don’t know if I am glad that I didn’t succeed or mad at myself for failing both times.
By: A Baloch Girl
