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Women are so conditioned to not feel as though they own their own things, home, kitchen,... life - that the default is often a seeking of permission.
Women are so conditioned to not feel as though they own their own things, home, kitchen,… life – that the default is often a seeking of permission.
Trigger warning: This post contains depiction of normalised violence against women, and may be triggering for survivors.
The guilt hisses when from my own kitchen I give myself an extra serving of rice. for whom my apology, or from whom permission? the baby that I can’t conceive because I’m too fat? (or so I’ve been told, repeatedly) my body, that has never loved me back? every indigestible ‘don’t’ and ‘no,’ an unsealing crack.
at the store, I find a lipstick like, look at the price tag and put it back. for now, it’s his money, not mine, that makes my world go round and I hate to ask, even when I know he’ll say yes. no one quite understands why, not even I. I loathe everything about this “choice.”
I find I must take a deep breath, every time I sit to write. I know my words will offend but who? and when? and why? and how? each question, a bullet, aimed at me. oftentimes, I simply am not brave enough. better women than me have died quite literally, for daring to speak out, so fear colours the ink in which my words are wrought .
the neckline on the dress I love is a little too low, a safety pin comes to the rescue, but I flinch at my own hypocrisy. I wonder why their eyes matter more than me. what I wear and how I wear it will speak louder than my poetry. when the anger surfaces, I quell it with practicality.
But it exhausts me, being the good girl. it is hard work, finding the loopholes that allow my little “badness.” I can’t just be fallible, you see, it’s not just about me. every little fault, hung out to dry, is a judgement on all my sisters. because it’s always “all women.”
So then I perform this sleight of hand. the docile goddess is but a disguise, a misdirection, and meanwhile it is the rebel girls that my secret hand feeds. every day i water that seed, so a day will come when my daughters won’t need to ask, “may I?”
Author’s Note: This poem was written in response to a prompt, “Why do womxn take permission?” shared in the Facebook writing group, Womxn Of Political Writing. The prompt made me think of the many ways in which I do take permission. Most of the time, I seem to need my own permission –because conditioning means that even when I theoretically know that I can and must do what makes me happy, guilt, shame or fear still arise.
It was this that I wrote about then.
Image source: shutterstock
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