Loving Difficult Women

The more I post the more I'm able to de-compartmentalise my own cognitive dissonance. I tried very very hard to fit into a world that I just didn't have the skills to be able to endure. I was conflicted so much by what I felt, which was far more compelling than what I was told I should be doing to fit in. I don't fit and pretending was what what causing my mind to unravel. I felt like I was being beaten with a proverbial stick every time I made a movement that was not "normal". I wanted desperately to be normal so people would stop attacking me, but I just couldn't.

I think the hardest thing I had to deal with was people's anger at me. I've always been of the opinion that it wasn't really me they were angry at. It was themselves that they were struggling with deep inside. They saw parts of themselves in me and like someone had brow beaten them into submission they could articulate those feelings upon me. I was tangible. What they were feeling was abstract. For a long time I was angry back because I knew that it was painful but I didn't feel their approach was helpful to me as an individual. 

I've had a great deal of empathy for every woman that criticised me. This is because I knew that someone criticised them. As much as I'd like to say I haven't done the same. I have. There were times I faked it so well that I fit in. Part of that fitting in is that if you see someone not fitting in you must make them by force. It however is not the not fitting in that's painful but the  forcefulness used to make someone to bend and form to the shape of the status quo. 

These women are so delicate. I don't say that as an insult but an observation. They're fighting daily with themselves because at some point somebody made them feel bad about who they are. That is not something easily discarded. Someone saw promise in them and did not believe that the full potential could be reached if they weren't criticised harshly. That's sad to me and I feel a great deal of empathy for them. I've been in that situation and I exited because I just didn't have it in me to do it to other people.

This weird thing would happen though. When I walked away and abandoned them because I couldn't take the pain of watching them torment themselves. They became even more angry and fixated on me. When I couldn't take their misinterpretation of why I'd walked away I'd lash out. It was the only way they seemed to knowhow to communicate with me because that's how people communicated with them.

When write about these women it isn't one or even a handful. It's almost quite nearly every woman I've come in contact with. Each one thinking the words I wrote were solely directed at them. Women who've felt the sharp sting of criticism their whole life were angry I would turn from understanding to criticise them too. But I wasn't criticising them until they made personal attacks on me. I was criticising the structuralism that kept women in this place of self loathing.

It's not easy to be a woman and that is something I can largely empathise with and understand. I however seem to have an insight that this isn't localised. It's a large problem. One at times I don't know how to fix. I want above all to have the freedom to write what I write from a place of honesty. I want to write it not to hurt but to open eyes to what the real pain is in being a woman.

Attacking another woman is not going to help change anything for why, when put in such an onerous position of being not only critical of women in general but themselves they can not see the structural forces dictating this. I loved some of these women so deeply that I tried very hard to help them but they were blinded by feelings that were deeply ingrained in them far before I ever met them or knew them. I didn't create the problem I just took the transparency away... The security blanket as such.

I wish I had the right words sometimes so as to not offend. I wish they could see the freedom in letting go sometimes. That they are human and we love them far more for those human qualities rather than the perfectionism that someone criticised them about in the past. These a deep traumatic wounds that sometimes are best left ignored than proved to unravel. 

I unraveled myself and it was deeply painful. I was punished mercilessly for it. I've only just come out of the hardest 2 years of my life where I wasn't willing to pretend anymore. I know that the criticism I received leading up to and during that came from a place of "love". But it's a very misguided notion of love and more to do with feelings of worthlessness. I don't think these women are worthless I think they're amazing. It's just far to hard to scratch the surface of something that has been strongly constructed to protect their vulnerabilities.

These women were taught that vulnerability was a sin. That it was something that they needed to have beaten out of them. That it made them weaker. That's not true though. Their vulnerability is what's beautiful. It's what makes them human. It's what makes me love them. But I understand the danger they face should they let those vulnerabilities surface. 

For some of them it's too difficult and I respect and empathise with that. I however will not stand in the firing line though for loving them because as much as showing vulnerability is painful for them, being brow beaten is painful for me and something I can't deal with or believe makes me stronger. There's that old saying though that boiling water hardens the potato but softens the egg. I'm not afraid to say I'm an egg but I don't say it in pride. It's just who I am and as much as I want others to be who they are, I want the boundaries and respect to be myself.