note to self?

this morning we were discussing you, my place to scribble where i talk to myself and check if i can word some things, let off steam, think aloud.

he spoke of you with finality, though it was i who said that you were dead. but thats untrue. i haven't run out of things to say. i merely haven't yet safely negotiated a space to talk from. - now that there is another person who would be affected by what i say here, and affected moreover in a more direct way than my family would be, i need to be very sure before speaking. he says he wouldn't mind, but is that a chance i can take? i tend to think not.

i also need to rethink and see what i'll put under the cause of "openness and community building" and what i'll put under "private and personal". there are so many new things in my life now, and a different range of experiences. it's taking time to think through them all thoroughly. also, i never wanted you to be a journal sort of thing, being a mostly an impassive person in love with theory. but the way life is turning out, since this marriage thing, i have no time beyond office work and house work. i rarely meet people. yet there is much "happening". so it will turn out somewhat like a journal i suppose, if i do write.

there are some very big things for which if i look around to read and know what other women have done, faced, handled, i don't see indians. i want to know for my community. my group. there is too much that is too different from white women's lives. so for now i look through journal publications, but i keep wondering if there is an indian housewife - living in india - who writes a feminist blog. i would like very much to know what the hell is happening in our lives and how common some things are, what women do...

some day, i'll put down those things i've been thinking to myself, to my women friends and to him. until then, be patient. i haven't abandoned you. i think of you often, especially when we've managed to work something good out peacefully. or when i realise another thing about the institution of marriage, my perception of roles of husbands and wives, my family, my mother's support, my sister's perspective, housework, representation, the home, fights, peace, sex... i have needed and drawn on feminism, gender and counselling experiences more than i ever dreamt i would. i don't think my marriage is very representative in that sense, but that could also be untrue: i don't know what is happening in other women's lives. more than i ever, i deeply miss a strong, brown feminist community.