I got married at a very young age when I was still in college. First one month of the marriage everything was normal. We had lots of visitors coming over and were also invited at various relatives’ places. It was a lot of fun.

Then it was my first birthday after wedding and my parents had invited my in-laws and me to celebrate the occasion. This has been the norm for the last 20 years, to celebrate my birthday by inviting large number of friends at our home.

But after marriage on this first birthday I was told that neither I nor any of my in-laws will visit my parent’s place for the occasion. I was shocked with this change of plans at the last moment. It was my first brush with adversaries in my marriage.

The abusive behaviour increased with time. I was criticised for my actions too often. They used to mock me for being too novice or for not being as good a cook as my mother in law was. The hardships reached to a point when my mother-in-law started physically abusing me. One day she threw the food I had cooked at me and that was the threshold, that day I had to drag her and lock her in a room in order to save myself from any further physical harm.

I was very young and not acquainted with family politics, the blame game, the tricks and mockeries. I felt very harassed and unwanted. I realised even my husband was a part of this as he never protested against his mother for any of her abusive actions. At times the altercation reached to a point where even my parents were being verbally abused about my upbringing.

With time the situation got worse. Meanwhile, I had already finished my post graduation. I took the first step forward; I started working as a school teacher. My decision to work led to a third world war kind of situation at home. While I became financially independent, made lots of friends, started visiting them often and started showing lesser and lesser interest towards the family politics and blame game, my in-laws left no stone unturned to jeopardise my life. There would be times when my mother in law would feel very feverish although no body temperature could be detected in the thermometer. Clearly, she did this to force me to quit my job, as she felt with me working she is over burdened with household chores. Even when we had one full time maid employed.

I tried my best to make peace, but whatever I did only resulted in more complications. For example, my brother in law did not like the tea I prepared, my sister in law did not like the colour of the salwar suit I gifted her.  Eventually, I decided to not let these adversaries take away my happiness. After school I used to keep myself busy reading books and I made it a point to pay least attention to my husband’s needs. Whenever my husband would talk about having a baby, I would say, “I do not want to as I am not sure how long our relationship will last.”

Years down the line, yesterday was my 13^th marriage anniversary. We celebrated it with my 10 year old son. Today things are better, but it took a long time for things to fall in place.

With all these years of experience I have realised that whatsoever government or organisations like Breakthrough may do for women, the one thing that is most important for a woman is to have self respect. She needs to understand her own worth and love herself more than anything else. She has to win over the hardship by winning respect for herself in her own eyes. Organisations like Breakthrough can catalyse the process to a great extent by empowering you but it is ultimately YOU who have to take a stand, and take action well in time, strike the iron when it is hot.

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Disclaimer:

The thoughts and opinions expressed in this post are those of the author and are not necessarily endorsed by Breakthrough or any other member of this blog.