An Open Letter from a Woman
I’m sitting in the library, coming out of my skin. My oldest is perched on my lap begging me to read to him, while my youngest lay in the stroller by my side begging for food. Minutes later, I’m reading and feeding, my left arm extended to help balance my four month old’s bottle, my right arm a makeshift seat belt to protect my three year old from falling. But, here’s the thing - I’m falling.
I rushed the three of us out of the house this morning as it felt too heavy to be inside. While I’ve come to love the space and the happy memories made inside of it, it’s also home to a shattered woman.
How did I get here? To say I’m angry feels demeaning, as if there’s an actual word, and a basic one at that, to describe how it feels to move through the world as a woman and what our grim future in this country looks like. As if “angry” could ever carry the load we carry for even one hour of one day. As if that small word could stomach listening to a baby screaming for 40 minutes in the back of the car while bleeding out itself while calculating the next time each of its kids have to eat and pee while working through the fear of a lost career and sense of self and rights to its own body while driving and holding it the fuck together to keep two humans safe and emotionally healthy. It’s laughable and it’s utterly insufficient.
My dad was visiting last summer and asked why I seemed so angry. What an unbelievable privilege to live each day in this country and not feel angry. He’s an old, white man. The country is literally run by him. It operates in his favor. He knows nothing. It wasn’t even worth explaining to him, and I was too tired to do so.
Whenever he was mad at me growing up, or if I did something wrong, he called me “little girl.” I eventually learned to take his insults and threats with a grain of salt, but that phrase and the way he hurled it at me always stung. He wanted me to feel smaller than him - to instill a constant sense of fear that he was bigger and in control. I made a pact with myself very early on that I would never share any part of my life with a man that made me feel like I did when that offense was slung at me. I guess I have him to thank for that.
That was just the beginning, though. Having a girl is dangerous because they grow up to be so much smarter and wiser than their fathers and, well, all the men in their life. They don’t miss anything. They may not have understood what they were witnessing at the time, but they take mental snapshots and store them away. Then, by the time they’re in their mid-thirties, all they’ve quietly observed from being a young girl, to an adolescent girl, to a girl ready to question religion, to a girl in high school, to a woman in college, to a woman in the workforce, starts to fit together like a demented puzzle. And, then, by god, they may get pregnant and maybe give birth, with absolutely no guarantee that baby will be alive when they do so. If they're lucky and make it through the precarious process with minimal issues, they then have to try to live with the fact that those same 'pro-life' members of congress refuse to acknowledge gun reform, now the number one cause of children deaths in the US. And, they shatter. Because it’s so much worse than the puzzle they just put together. The realization and hypocrisy of it all - of how little women are cared for and protected and understood in our society shatters them in a million ways.
So, to know all that we already know as women, 2016 burned hotter than hell. We watched our country vote into office a deeply misogynistic reality star over one of the most qualified people to ever run for the position. It incited a feeling that simply can’t be described. It wasn’t anger; it wasn’t even what I felt as a “little girl.” People will tell you over and over that they just didn’t like her and her policies, but that’s a lie. She lost because she’s a woman. We know that. And, the man who bragged about grabbing women’s pussies without their consent won. What word would you use to describe that? It said everything about where we stand. We knew what was coming. And, yet, this week still feels surreal.
I’m trying to understand how I can help and fight and cry and still smile through the degradation, but I feel helpless. Because I know there’s so much more in danger of being rescinded other than the right to our own bodies. There are so many more groups of people that will have their rights revoked. It’s chilling. So, yes, I’m coming out of my skin. I’m falling fast. But, ironically, I’m lifted by two boys. Two boys who I can raise on my own terms. Two boys who will, if nothing else, respect and fight for women the rest of their lives, with an understanding of how monumentally different their journey is. All of us with young boys have the power to change the narrative. There’s relief and hope in that reality. Until then, we shatter just a little bit more.
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