A couple of days ago I woke up to the harsh reality that I am not a person who thinks from a source of gender equality. In fact, the inequality is so deeply rooted in me, that I sometimes don't even recognise it for what it is. But I am a lucky one. I share my life with someone who wakes me up to this reality. Who hears when I speak against myself. When I suppress my own gender. When I unknowingly disrespect myself, and all women - all while strongly speaking for equal rights.
It's a jungle growing up. We all know that. And I grew up as a girl on her way to becoming woman. A woman I thought should be and act a certain way, in order to be a good woman. The right kind of woman...
What we do as children is follow patterns. We do and act according to what we feel will be accepted, respected and most of all: loved. I don't know where my view of what a woman should be like came. Did I hear it, did I see it, did I experience it, feel it, was I taught it? I don't know, but this was rooted in me: that women wanting too much are difficult. Full stop. End of discussion. Simply difficult. And for a child difficult is not accepted. For a child difficult often means unlovable. And just as anyone and probably everyone else, I wanted to be loved. I wanted to be loved, appreciated and respected. So I worked hard at avoiding the label of being difficult. And so little by little I became easy. And I did a lot in order to be easy. I compromised everything from thoughts, feelings, opinions, wants and desires - all the way to my own body. In the earlier years it was to be able to be like one of the boys - as a woman with the attempt of keeping and/or pleasing a man. I did not see the world through my own eyes, but through the convenience of the man. Now plenty of you may react to this. Thinking things are not really like this. But plenty of you did not grow up as me. And I am 100% sure that I am not alone in this behaviour or in these thoughts. I am also 100% sure that the inequality that still strongly lives in our society is not only because of the man and the attitude of men. It is also because so many of us women don't even realise the way we are treating ourselves. What we think of ourselves and other women. What we do in the search for love. How we mold ourselves. What we compromise in order to keep the peace. To get the respect. This is where it all goes wrong; that we think that we need to change or be a certain way in order to be loved and treated equal. For by doing that, by changing and/or compromising who we are, we as well uphold the walls of inequality.
I am not being "easy" anymore. I have stopped persieving my own feelings, needs, wants and opinions as trespassing. To express oneself is not to be difficult (!!). This I've really had to tell myself. And never in my life have I been so loved. So appreciated and so respected. Because never in my life did I love, appreciate and respect myself as much as I do now. That's why never in my life did I think I was good enough to be with someone whose values, whose heart and whose love is as good as the purest of golds.
Lovelovelove,
Carolina
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