If you are a girl reading this, I bet you've heard at least a couple of the phrases below at least once in your lifetime and felt like either bolting out or just hurling the first thing you can get your hand on towards the so-called well-wishers.

"But you are girls so you should be careful".

"You should be careful traveling alone at night".

"You are a diamond that is equally beautiful and brittle".

Under the pretext of protecting us from the evil in this world, the world itself has devised norms by which we should be living and whoever tries to trespass this border is called names or considered an outcast.

Oftentimes, parents forget that in the process of raising a "good girl", they are slowly killing the human inside. A person who maybe doesn't want dainty hands and legs but a tough body to wrestle, who isn't a winsome charmer but maybe a brutally good lawyer. But well, good girls do not speak up and talk softly, walk shyly and never ever dream their own dreams.

So here's a poem I wrote to all those who love us and want to protect us from being misused or damaged but fail to understand that their concern is choking our freedom to express and sometimes even survive.

You're a diamond, they tell me
That loses its charm with a simple scratch
A treasure chest,
That only opens up for one king
A forbidden fruit,
The sacred grail,
The holy flower.

I've been fed these metaphors for so long now,
that I have come to believe;
The only natural course to relations is
Gushing ripples of emotions suffering slow deaths
under hesitations and denial;
Denial to intimacy : emotional more than physical.
Hesitation to shed my vulnerabilities
Denial to accept those of others.
In the attempt to protect me from heartbreaks and dismay,
You pushed life astray the days.