I Stood Alone. I am Enough
- Luvv A Sanwal
- Jun 12, 2025
- 3 min read
“You should give him up.”
That's what they told me.
As if he were a pair of old shoes I could just leave at someone’s doorstep.
They said it like they were helping me.
Like ripping out a piece of my heart was a form of kindness.
“He’ll ruin your future.”
“You’re too young.”
"You'll be stuck forever."
"Think about your parents, your reputation."
I didn’t ask for pity.
My mornings start at 5.
Boil the milk. Warm the water. Iron the clothes. Pack lunch.
Do all chores before I leave for my job - to SURVIVE in this world.
I remember walking into my first job interview.
The manager looked me up and down. Like it was a disease.
"Must be hard raising someone else's problem," he smirked.
I wanted to scream. But I needed the job.
So I said nothing. Like I’ve done a hundred times since.
Now, I go to work at a beauty parlour.
7-9 hours on my feet, massaging the heads of women who look at me like I’m dirt.
“She’s the one, right?" one speaks.
Another look at me, “You’re too pretty to be this… ruined.”
Ruined? Because I chose love instead of shame?
They tip me like they’re doing charity.
I smile. In this world, dignity doesn’t cook dinner.
My back aches, my wrists burn, but the second, I see him smiling, the pain folds itself into something softer.
I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in 4 years.
But I have learned to sleep standing in line at ration shops, and while waiting for fever to go down at 3 a.m.
My own relatives don’t invite me to weddings.
“She’ll bring bad luck,” someone whispered.
My own brother says, “Who’ll marry you now?”
My aunt whispers, “It’s embarrassing.”
Friends faded too. When I reached out, there was silence.
They didn’t want to be associated with someone who "ruined her own life."
Even my mother, my own mother, said once, “Maybe it would’ve been easier if you had just left him.”
Do they think I sleep peacefully?
Do they think I don’t cry, wondering how I’ll stretch the next thousand rupees through the week?
What’s really embarrassing is how people think raising a child alone is a bigger sin than a man leaving his own blood behind?
And still… I have never looked at my son and wished he wasn’t born.
Not once.
He wraps his arms around me every night and says,
“I love you, Ma.”
And in that moment, all the noise dies.
The taunts, the pity, the stares, the shame.
It all disappears.
And if anyone asks me again—
“Why didn’t you give him up?”
I will look them straight in the eye and say: Yes, I made a mistake. I fell in love. I trusted a man who disappeared the moment I said the word “pregnant.”
But why is it only my mistake they tattooed on my forehead?
Love isn’t something you throw away just because it came in an unexpected form. He is the only thing in my life that was truly worth choosing. He is my reason.
And I’ll raise him to know that his mother didn’t bend, didn’t break, and didn’t beg to be accepted.
She stood alone. And that was enough.
-The End
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