1. don’t get your hopes up
2. don’t give up when you can try harder.
3. don’t be afraid to know when to quit.
4. don’t get your hopes up.
5. don’t ever think that you’re too good for something.
6. don’t ever think that you’re not good enough for something.
7. don’t assume it won’t happen to you.
8. don’t forget that things happen for a reason.
9. don’t get your hopes up.
10. do feel free to throw yourself a brief yet effective pity party every once in a while.
I am worried. I am worried about how I am perceived, I am worried about the way we over-react or under-react, I am worried about what is going on in this world, in this country, in this community. I have been shamed for my so-called “feminist beliefs”(though in my opinion, these are civil rights issues), criticized for being too outspoken, told that my positions offend people. I have bitten my tongue when my words were jumping to escape my throat, I have politely looked away when yet another person makes a rape joke, and I have silenced myself because I was just too tired to get into it with a person who was begging me for an argument so that he could end it by making some comment about “belonging in the kitchen,” before laughing and high-fiving his guffawing friend, like that was even an original remark.
I am worried about attitudes. I’m worried that I can come off as too aggressive, or not aggressive enough. I am worried that women—intelligent, educated, informed women—are staying quiet because they are afraid they won’t be able to land a man if they express an opinion about any women’s issues. I have been told that “guys won’t date” me because I talk too much about feminist issues. I have been told I’m not feminine enough, that I’m too serious, that my intelligence is unsexy, or even worse, that I’m “too pretty to talk about such things.” I’ve been accused of being a lesbian—I’m not, but tell me what’s so wrong about that if I were? Are we really still using that as an insult? I have been assumed a victim because I speak passionately about the injustices of our rape culture: “You’re only saying that because it happened to you.” Actually, I have not been a victim, but what should that matter? How does it not infuriate you to hear that another HUMAN BEING has had these atrocities committed against them? How do you sit there and laugh along as someone cracks another joke that blames the victim?
I am worried that we, as a community, are not nearly worried enough about issues of violence, rape, and sexual abuse. I am worried that we have come to see it as too mainstream, hardly an item that’s newsworthy any more, and I just DON’T GET IT. I don’t understand why Katy Perry told the world she wasn’t a feminist, like it was some sort of leprosy, and I don’t understand why Adele’s weight is more widely discussed than the Steubenville rape case. What I do understand is that these are not light-hearted or sexy topics and before long my friends are rolling their eyes. “Really, Emily? This again? Why can’t we talk about something else?” Because we NEED to, that’s why. Because the less people talk about it, the fewer people that know, and the more misinformed and apathetic they become about the scope of these issues. I am worried that we are not having real discourse about any of these things because we are afraid of offending someone and we are all worse for it. I am worried that young girls and boys are learning through our actions and inactions and will continue to perpetuate this myth that it will go away if we just ignore it.
I am worried that we see what we want to see. I am terrified that I am alienating friends by posting too many articles written by Eve Ensler and Gloria Steinem, articles about women’s health or gay rights issues. I am equally terrified that if I don’t post about it, there are people who wouldn’t even know that these things exist. I am incredibly angry that my friends who post forty-seven pictures of cats each day don’t have to worry about alienating their social media connections, but when I bring up an issue of basic human rights, I seem to be in front of a firing squad. I know that of the few people who even expanded this to read more, most of you have thought “tl;dr” and abandoned your reading. I can’t do anything about it and I don’t like it, but thank you for simultaneously proving my point and exemplifying the problem.
I am worried that we have ceased to think critically about the way the media is filtering these stories to us, and how that affects the way our society perceives current events. I am physically sick at the way that CNN reported on the Steubenville rape case, mourning the lost futures of the perpetrators and neglecting to even mention the pain, suffering, and humiliation of the 16 year old victim, who is now the subject of online bullying by her FEMALE peers over the case—victim blaming at its finest, nearly condoned by a network TV station (http://www.upworthy.com/cnn-pays-touching-tribute-to-the-rapists-who-attacked-a-16-year-old-girl?c=upw1). I am worried that even our own president can think of women only in the context of their relationships with and value to men (http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/i-am-not-your-wife-sister-or-daughter/). I am worried that people are quick to dismiss rape as a “women’s issue” rather than a human rights issue, and are ignoring the fact that it is used as a systematic tactic of war, often against men, who are deemed ineligible for victim support services due their gender(http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2011/jul/17/the-rape-of-men). I am worried that we are teaching our children to be submissive in their attitudes because talking about these things is uncomfortable and unpleasant and would rather be avoided.
I am worried that these worries are holding me back, and silence has become our biggest enemy, so I am releasing these worries into the public domain. I applaud the few of you who have read this far—I know even 140 characters can be a challenge, at times. I encourage you to react, to read and follow the links, to post your own sources of fury, to offer your opinion even if it is contrary to mine. It is only through discussion and discourse—not silence— that we can change anything. In my opinion, it is high time for change.
And of course I can never keep track of time— too late, too early, too forgetful to show up in the first place. A day early this time, and years too late on resolutions to keep writing, keep writing, keep writing. Before I had been too preoccupied with how the reader would perceive me, is my vocabulary too simple? My tone too condescending, my subject matter too childish, naive? Thank you, Maura, for reminding me that it is more important to record the way you are in that moment. Pictures can only take you so far, but the feeling of those words, forming on twisted tongues with stumbling syntax because sometimes your brain is running faster than your lips, erupting into an outburst— that, THAT, is what takes you back to being there, to feeling how a twenty five or seventeen or thirty six year old feels when you are too far removed to remember the words to that favorite song. I’m not interested in the short summaries of nights out and blurry photos of mediocre bands, I want to transport myse lf back into my own head and remember the things that I didn’t say, the things that cannot be twisted by arguing details with others.
Right now, I feel like the bugs are back; that swarm of fireflies that invaded my insides in my final years of college, that constant buzzing of unproductive activity just waiting to be released. It’s like I can feel that fickle fluttering of a million tiny wings in my lungs, alternately choking me and rewarding me with full — it’s sometimes pleasant, but never peaceful. The harmonious humming of hundreds of things I want to do, say I will do, weak and withered now, pushed to the bottom by the things I must do, have to do, hoping that more of one will make up for less of the other.
I want to escape it. I want to leave everything. I want to pack a pickup truck and gas it up and go someplace with more cows than people, departing while the hood is still dimpled with dew, leaving a simple note and my phone behind. But I know that urge, however real it may be, isn’t the answer, because as much as I want to escape it would just be so comfortable, so easy to stay here and sleep another hour, ignore another invitation; It’s not like indulging either would bring satisfaction, never mind happiness, not the kind that everyone I know seems to be finding in their travels, their careers, their children— their self discovery of how and where they fit in their webs of wonderful people and things. I’m an immobile nomad, pulled by equal forces in both directions so so long I’ve started to grow roots.
Is there anything other than just temporary happiness, really? Is there some switch that suddenly flips when I meet the right person, or take the right job? Is there some secret well inside me that the fireflies have been feeding on, a reservoir of warm feelings that I just can’t access due to my own parasitic and poisonous doubts?
Oh, Maura, Maura, Maura…
