Hudson NH
“Don’t swear. It’s the mark of the unintelligent. Be quiet, respectful, polite, and above all else don’t cause a scene. Only emotionally unstable people do that.” These are some of the many lessons I had driven into my head by society when I was growing up. You see I had the great misfortune to be born as one of the most terrifying things in the world – a girl. I’d heard that statement touted by liberals for years and I always thought it was…. daft, at best. My life wasn’t terrible. I mean… my grandmother’s wasn’t a walk in the park but things were different now. I could grow up to be president! Right?
Coll’s Farm Jaffrey NH
…..Right? Maybe not. I mean I loved hearing all about empowerment and the importance of girls and women from certain sections of our community but did it mean anything when I was still sitting in class, quiet as a dormouse, even when I vehemently disagreed with what was being taught? Was it useless hope-inspired propaganda that just flossed through my ears in those moments I wasn’t letting all my peers treat me like shit for no reason? I mean I liked to think of myself as articulate, opinionated, strong-willed and defiantly moral. I loved everyone, cared about everyone else’s feelings, and worked hard to tread lightly upon the world. And sure, I tried desperately to seek respect. I wore modest feminine clothes, never swore, and was always kind. But still no one listened to me first because I was “just a child” then because I was “just a teenager” and finally because I had become “just a woman.” A “fine young lady” at that. And that’s when I started to be completely reviled by it all. A fine young lady sounded sooo…. condescending.This problem only grew when I started having a lot of medical issues and started going to hospitals and clinics almost as an extracurricular hobby. Not one of those doctors could figure it out in the fifteen minutes they were allotted to meet me and most decided to shuffle the blame on “psychosomatic symptoms.” This is the modern word for hysterical. It meant my pain wasn’t valid, respected, or even believed. I was for all intent and purposes disposable.
Time prattled on. My health got worse, my life got thrown into the shitter. The school I tried so desperately to impress I ended up dropping out of. Doctors still couldn’t figure out what ailed me and by now I was believing them. Maybe I was just nuts. Being constantly invalidated left me with no self esteem. I was a doormat. So it’s not surprising that the only boyfriend I managed to find was also a condescending disrespectful asshole. After five years and building quite the life together he broke up with me because he found a better woman. He made sure to let me know exactly how much better she was than me. After years of telling me “jokingly” how shitty a job I did at everything he then went on to tell me how perfect and better she was and why it was obvious the logical and only way he could possibly live his life – by discarding me who had busted my ass off for years supporting his sorry ass. And when he’d pushed me to the edge of that emotional cliff where I was about to rip out his intestines and use them as a streamers on a May pole he said this, “There is no place for rage in human emotion. That is the mark of someone who can’t keep control of themselves and it should never be expressed.” These, my dear readers, are the words of a sanctimonious coward. They’re the all-too-familiar lines used to control women, minorities, and the oppressed. They’re the words that come from power when the power is terrified you may realize just how shitty they’ve treated you and do something about it.
For the next six months I swore. I don’t mean a little shit or damn here and there I mean I broke out in full sailor mode. I added curses into every sentence in an amazing variety of combinations. I even made some up. I didn’t just feel rage over the break-up or over losing the life, the home, the farm, I had built, I felt rage over everything.I felt it for allowing myself to be duped, to be used, to be pushed aside, and disrespected, by sooooo many people. I felt it so intensely that it was this rage that prevented me from falling into a ceaseless depression when I moved back in with my mother in my thirties. And it’s this that pushed me forward. I traveled, I met new people, I indulged in every artistic desire, I formulated a plan for my writing, and I even wrote and published a book about my life. I stopped being a people pleaser, learned how to enforce personal boundaries, and grew fiercely independent in every way I could. I stopped giving a shit what other people thought of me and did what I wanted to do – dye my hair bright orange? Why not! Take a Sharpie after my car? Of course! Embrace my whole identity, even the parts that I’d hidden as not to make other people “uncomfortable”? YES YES YES. I became who I wanted to be not who everyone else wanted me to be and I did it by harnessing my rage.
For more than thirty years society told me that as a woman, as a person with chronic invisible illness and pain, and as a person of few means, I was supposed to just sit here and take it. Be grateful for what you do have! And I realized just how insidious this whole narrative really is. It’s put there by the people in power – so no one revolts. Personal revolt or en masse, it doesn’t matter. It’s all a threat to the status quo.
If you don’t believe me then just take a gander at my life going through the public school system. Here my entire education about the Civil Rights Movement was based on a mythology of the great and benevolent Martin Luther King Jr, a man lionized not as an individual but as the embodiment of an idea: pacifism. Pacifism to conquer all injustice in the world. Words like, “be the better man” would be scattered about. But something about this made me very uncomfortable. I didn’t know what it was at the time. It’s only now I am starting to understand that I was absolutely right to have a churning gut because that whole above narrative is complete and utter bullshit.
Martin Luther King Jr wasn’t some sort of saint or Buddha. He was a man, a flesh and blood, and at times absolutely flawed human, just like the rest of us. And you know what he wasn’t? A fucking pacifist! There is nothing passive about organizing a bunch of other people to take a beating on live TV from the cops. Nothing. It’s ingenious, heart wrenching, wonderfully rebellious, and perhaps even justified, but it’s not a peaceful act. Holding a mirror up to the world’s gross injustices is never a peaceful act. It can’t be. Society would never change if you left it to do so on it’s own. Too many people are always too invested in keeping things the way they are even if that way is horrific and wrong. This is just human nature. So teaching children that injustice can be cured through pacifism — this only serves those in power to stay there.
And so here I am… being told by women in their 50’s, 60’s, and beyond that they wish they were as brave as I am, that they could have said no to the bullshit. And as endearing as that is I feel I’m too old to be learning this! This should be something we teach children!
I’m frequently disgusted and shamed by the generations older than me and sometimes those the same age or younger. I have found myself shaking when I hear women defend pedophiles and rapists over their own daughters and sons. “It’s not worth causing a scene and ruining someone’s reputation or starting drama.” How could you?
We have a long way to go. I’m not going to lie. But I am going to say that when focused and used in a positive manner anger and rage are not just completely appropriate they’re needed tools and we should never deny ourselves our own emotions just to please others. When the time comes make a fucking scene! Swear! Be Yourself! And don’t ever fucking apologize for just existing. EVER.
