Ignoring gut feeling, Part One

It's impossible for me to write on the computer at my parents house without someone reading over my shoulder, or at least being in the room. No privacy. Which is why I had to move out, besides it being complete time. There is no emotional space for creativity at their house, and someone is always hovering.This concept of presence is interesting to me, particularly relating to a conversation I had yesterday, with the always lovely Miss B, who took me out for lunch ( for which I will always be grateful, and I completely have a bottle of wine with your name on it on my dresser. Which is where I keep wine, apparently). She referred to me as an orphan, a concept which I'd never considered, considering that my parents are alive and relatively well, and still very much involved in my life.

Generally, one assumes that an orphan is someone who has lost their parents, or who never knew their parents, who has been rejected by their parents. Well, I just defined that one right there for myself.

I have to do laundry, and it just doesn’t want to get done. Everything I own is strewn around on the floor of my room, waiting to be clean. The doing of anythign is kind of eliding me this afternoon. It’s so much better to just stare into my mug of tea, wishing I had coffee, listening to Jennifer Terran music in the background. My muscles don’t want to move, and my heart is heavy. With sleep, with dreams, with waking and being.

Although my mood could swing and sway away at any time, today seems to be a dull one. Sluggishness and some sort of apprehension.

When did I stop listening to Sinead O’Connor and Patti Smith? Such awe-someness.
When the guilt set in. The guilt of being a girl and listening to music made by other gals. It’s a dangerous place to play, within the guilt of gender. Never healthy. Distance and thought around it, the whys and hows and maybes, but never the guilt.

If I feel guilty about being a girl, it means that I’m completely buying into the belief systems that girls are not good enough, and that yes, there will always be something lacking, to go back far beyond Freud and his presumed enviousnesses. No wonder I feel like shit if I wake up every morning believing, in the back of my mind and soul, that I’m not good enough, not enough because of my gender and so-called gender-isms.That my “girliness” is a hindrance to others, and that what I spend my day doing and believing in is not good enough.

Part of this is no doubt brought up by multiple conversations I had yesterday (with Adriana and Jo) about sports and dance/music classes. I spent most of my elementary school years ( age 5-12){That’s 7 years, a really really long time to a kid} trying desperately to play any and all team sports. I played soccer, volleyball, basketball, softball. I even tried curling. Tried to learn how to skate. Tried to run track and field. Tried gymnastics, even. Essentially, I spent 7 years fiercly trying to do something I hated. Because I wanted to fit in. because everyone played sports, and in order to be anybody or anything, you not only had to play team sports, you had to be good at them. And I never was.

I loathed each and every practice, would scream and cry before every soccer game, and yet, I kept on, determined. There was no other way that I saw, no other potential way to exist and be seen and be a part of school, of community, of life.

I was supposed to toughen up, to get used to the rough and tumble way of sports. I even hated having to go outside and play on the playground at lunchtime, or daycare. I wanted to stay inside and read Nancy Drew or color or make jewellery.

Well, I never toughend up. I am not your typical tough girl, thick skinned and bittersweet. I am these thigns, but it’s in my bones. Deep marrow, the bones that hold me up, but are covered in veins, sinews, muscles and skin. Delicate skin that tears easily and bears all the scars I’ve ever pretended not to notice.

I was discouraged. My courage lost in a full barrel rolled off a rocky cliff somewhere off a distant coast. Disenheartened, fierce heart.