A Woman’s Regret + Self-recrimination

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A woman’s regret often spells these dominant words: 1) Persistent 2) Perceived 3) Failure.

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And all those things can keep her feet tied to the ground like shackles. Worry keeps her silent.

I used to be such a worrywart; I still am sometimes. But the sky, ultimately, didn’t fall. Worry can creep into my thoughts like a mouse through the tiniest of holes.

I was always so hard on myself. If something went wrong, I was convinced it was my fault. 

The weight of the world sat on my shoulders like a boulder fell down on it from above. 

For years, I lived like that. I took the blame. I took the shame. I said I’m sorry when I didn’t even know what I was sorry for.

And probably most unhealthy of all, I worried that I needed a man to make me relevant. Was this a learned process? Was I a product of the times I grew up in?

What is Love?

I didn’t know what love was. I sought it, chased it, and grabbed the loose ends of possibility. Yet relationships that seemed promising turned out unhealthy. They soured like milk left on the counter too long.

The problem had to be me, I thought. I was the common denominator.

Then, out of absolute necessity, pressed firmly against an unforgiving wall, I had no choice but to pack myself up and drive away from the very last man.

And there will never be another.

I had let the whole sordid thing go on for too long until there was scarcely anything left of me. 

So I swept up the pieces and moved on, scary as that was at the time. Not knowing who I was, or what I would do, or where I was going.

Faced with a grim reality, I chose survival. Because to stay where I was would have been a form of death. 

The Loneliest Feeling

There’s no lonelier feeling than sitting across from someone you share a house with and not being able to think of a single thing to say.

Words sat on my tongue, but I didn’t dare speak them. I knew what I had to do, but fear of the unknown kept me from opening that door.

I knew deep down that I would have to go out into the great big scary world and wrestle my fears into submission. Or the last of my then tiny voice would get stomped out in the man’s perception of male superiority.

And I finally closed the door and drove away into that unknown. The boogeyman of every frightened woman’s psyche bloomed in my head.

I traveled down the highway to here. Scared half out of my wits about the unknown in front of me. But more afraid of what I’d left behind me.

Then I settled into living alone. 

And before I knew it, I realized that I had not only survived, but I had begun to thrive.

The very thing I was so afraid of was what I needed most of all. 

And the world didn’t end. The lights didn’t go out. Fire didn’t obliterate the landscape.

The sky didn’t fall. I was free.

Lesson learned: Endless worrying about what will happen tomorrow is not only pointless but also can be debilitating. It can cement your feet to the floor and keep you powerless.

When a Woman is Free

There will always be things to worry about. But try to shift into a lower gear so it doesn’t steal your happiness.

I let someone steal mine. Then one day I realized that I had handed him the reins to begin with. Without me handing them over, he couldn’t have crushed my spirit like a tin can.

My fault. Many women’s fault, it seems. Are we programmed to give up our authority, or is it the patriarchal society that holds us back?

Once men started listing their grievances and forming a circle to hem us in, their voices eventually became louder and more strident.

When a cruel and uncaring man came down an escalator.

“Women fail to understand how much men hate them.”
— Germaine Greer

Some primal anger, deep down in them for a long, long time, was unleashed. With one man shaming us, many others then felt emboldened to join in.

And now look where we are. Barely holding on with the tips of our fingers. Held down by all the baggage we were born into.

Something I’ve realized: if we ever manage to wrest that power from their grip, we have to make sure they can never control us again.

We’ll have to join hands and dig our feet into the dirt to do it.

Women Joining Hands

Historian Gerda Lerner argues that patriarchal structures can change because they are cultural, not natural.

So, there is that.

But all it took was one angry bully to open the gate. Then they marched across the landscape, incensed at their own personal circumstances. Ready for battle.

So if you’re one tiny voice who has never really wanted to be heard, who has been silenced because of your gender, now you must demand more. It is for the future of our independence. And our daughters’ futures.

They won’t hand it to you; you’ll have to reach out and take it.

“In a society in which misogyny and violence against women are so widespread and so normalized, it is difficult for us to consider these things “extreme” or “radical,” because they are simply not out of the ordinary. We do not leap to tackle a terrorist threat to women, because the reality of women being terrorized, violated, and murdered by men is already part of the wallpaper.”
― Laura Bates, Men Who Hate Women: From Incels to Pickup Artists: The Truth about Extreme Misogyny and How it Affects Us All