With my
little eye I spy a woman that looks like me, that in fact is me,
sitting with a friend at a restaurant table, so how has this
autobiographical I been set-apart from this seated body? That I
couldn't tell you, for I've no idea how this works, except it's by no
means the first occurrence. Nor is it infrequent, quite the inverse.
Yet
that same unanswered question arises whenever I loiter outside my
body and begs for an answer. Any answer, however ill-conceived or
brilliant.
Tell
me, how is it possible to be sitting there and conversing, and
standing here observing my behaviour?
And why
don't I instantly recognise that the person I'm so obviously
interested in, is not an unknown twin or a freak of nature, but from
the same raw material I'm supposedly made of? Sugar and spice and all
things nice, with the exception that I'm not, contrary to popular
opinion, still a little girl. I'm not really sure quite what I am,
where I fit in the hierarchy of womankind, but little and girl is
decidedly not it. Youth? No. Youthful? I guess that could be applied,
just not to my mind nor spirit. Immaturity, even when I was of an age
to be at that stage, was not a hat I wore well, or at all. In
appearance, sure; that, I don't appear to have outgrown, but in
manner, no. I was always self-contained and not easily swayed; that
was my defiance, my two fingers to the world though I would never
have made that gesture. It wouldn't have been seemly from a girl who
wanted to be an financially independent woman with absolutely no ties
to hold her back. Others of the feminist persuasion might say it
would have been just that: very apt to tell the world in no uncertain
terms to shove that domestic trap, the trap of M: Men, Marriage and
Motherhood.
However,
whilst I may have stuck to avoiding that letter, my thirst for
independence arose foremost because of being a solitary creature, not
because I was exposed to the glass ceiling: told you can't do this or
that, this is your level. No, my awareness of that came much later.
You could say my upbringing painted the opposite picture, except it
wasn't done entirely from choice but necessity. Mum was one of those
women considered to have it all: a well-paid full-time job, a
hard-working husband, a nice house, a car, a kid. Hers was the
greater wage. And though it also gave her purpose and sanity, I
wasn't aware quite how much she wrestled with her conscience to
perform those three different roles: working woman, housewife, and
mother.
It's
just how it was. And yet in my feelings there was disparity: I
approved and longed for a more present mother, though if pressed now
I would say I wouldn't have had it any other way as I benefited from
seeing both my parents in their respective workplaces. I saw the
world of work and women at work, and how the two commingled. It was
an interesting period; one that gave me aspirations of achieving the
very same.
However,
those promises I made to myself were empty.
Empty
because even with the best will in the world I couldn't fulfil them,
not to my satisfaction or to the levels I witnessed others attain. To
do so I would have had to be made of sterner stuff. And I wasn't. The
stuffing instead got knocked out of me, and the positivity with which
I first entered into further education and then work hasn't
re-emerged. Did I abandon it or did it abandon me?
I think
it would be more truthful to say my efforts extinguished it as did
the pressure I exerted on myself. I'm a Type A, where good is not
good enough, where being more than good could mark your flesh, burn
your spirit. Unless you nip it in the bud or learn how far to push;
or if you get spat out one too many times to turn your back because
when did being equal mean you have to have it all. To be more than
man. In role and in manner; and yet still be woman. It's a sure-fire
way to fail, to feel a failure, and suffer from disassociation.
Picture credit: Portrait of a Young Girl after Ghirlandio, Massimo Tizzano