I have to admit, when I saw the topic for our first blog post, I considered just taking the point hit and abstaining entirely. I mean...I'm 34 years old, and long past the point of needing to be understood, encapsulated, or even mythologized. I didn't think I'd be able to do it, even for a supportive audience.
It's not that I believe I'm too good for it, of course---there's pretty much nothing on earth I think I'm too cool for--but more that my values have shifted so radically in recent years that the threat of revisiting that headspace of "self discovery" feels like a slippery slope I never want to get near ever again. I need manifestation these days, not introspection. I've been caught in the mud before, spinning my wheels waiting to act because my options didn't compliment my narrative of self ---of who I "thought" I was. I've even had years when I had no narrative to speak of, years I can barely account for not because I was strung out or in deep misfortune, but because nothing really happened. I thought it was enough that I was "smart", smart in that marginally useless way that gifts you with easy comprehension but doesn't supply you with the fire of curiosity. When I spoke of discovering who I was, the verb always played out in the cerebral sense, never in the sense of excavating, of clearing away, of engaging in physical *work*. I would think my way into living passionately, and when I thought hard enough, the big daddy in the sky would give me a prize--my purpose!! Sounds absurd now, but it was enough to keep me relatively sated through ten years of horrific office work and boyfriends who made me feel like a banal bourgeoisie piece of wood because I worked at a cakewalk desk job while they stayed home and "worked on" their mediocre zombie apocalypse novel/jerked off all day to suggestive video games. If I was a good girl, I'd get my Oprah moment.
Did the media have something to do with my complacency? You bet it did. Not to let me off the hook, because I was a lazy, sybaritic kind of kid, but I took for granted that one day I would feel like a "real" woman, and not a girl. I thought I would just...bloom, like all women seem to in the movies. I honestly and truly never expected to have to sweat in life.
I figured out recently that the only way to neutralize the harmful effects of my basically "feminine" nature---the tendency to overanalyze, be passive, wait to be called on---is to go the other way entirely. Instead of thinking these days, I'll do almost anything I can to get sweaty, do monkey work, push my muscles, get OUT of my head and into my gut. To me, the best kind of day is one so over scheduled, so intimidating, and so demanding that people look at me with pity. They ask me how I can still stand at the end of the day, and I smile and tell them that I can "butch up" at will.
I borrowed that phrase without really considering what it meant, but in getting this down on paper, my current obsession is obvious. I crave masculine energy, for myself. I crave fire. The truth is, acting "like a man" has made me feel more alive and more secure as a woman than all of the thinking I put so much stock in during my twenties. For many people, stopping to reflect is the wisest decision they could possibly make, but for me? If you give me the space to stop and consider my life, I'll abuse the privilege and be here all night. So I will tell you what you'd probably find out over a cup of coffee, which seems fair: I love animals and spend a lot of my free time working with them. I root for the underdog without fail. I care a lot about being pretty, or I care a lot that I never was. I think I'm reasonably funny when I'm not navel gazing, and I laugh easily and often. I have a really foul mouth. I cry when I hear Stevie Wonder's "Never Thought You'd Leave in Summer" and will get up and leave if I hear it because let's face it, butch bitches don't cry. I can get a tree to talk back to me if you give me enough time. I still want to be Nancy Drew when I grow up.
And right now, after so many years of soft hands and coasting on being articulate, the biggest compliment you can give me is to tell me to shut up and get to work.
Image: "Crocodile Eating Ballerina", Helmut Newton, 1983
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