nobody's perfect

It must be really hard being a woman. Like cosmic hard. Knowing you're the weaker sex not because you're really weaker but because of how strength has come to be defined. Knowing that for the rest of your life you'll always have to work that much harder just to get what others get in their sleep - because they're the ones handing out the awards. Having to grow up in a world that's basically an old boys' club with no old girls' club to take you in. Spending your whole life replacing every reference you can find of 'weaker' in 'weaker sex' with 'fairer', but knowing in your heart that it's really just a euphemism. Living in a world that considers exceeding mankind's former abilities extraordinary for men; but merely matching man the glass ceiling for you, the woman. Listening to everything around you, including other women, tell you where your place is, and how it wasn't kosher to try and rise above it. First having to defend your right to even be present before you can start agitating to be heard.

Having a personality that you take pride in, but that you have to watch recede; sometimes for the rest of your life. Having to watch it recede just so you can enable the dreams of another. Having to have your validation come from his. Going back home everyday to a man that agrees with society on how much success is too much for you; wanting you behind him always, to say yes to his whims and I'm sorry to his disappointments. Having to make yourself smaller so that he may shine. Submitting in every way he needs you to, and in so doing killing who you were and becoming a component of the man. The man you gave your heart to. Literally.

When I was growing up, I always saw myself as the kind of man that would pay mind to this plight. I always thought I would realise how equal we were, in that our different strengths were meant to be complementary to each other. I thought that when presented with the chance, I would cede control to the both of us rather than wield it as I had seen others before me. I was proud of the image of me I had in my mind. My idea of power then was always one of balance. Passing it on to those who may be able to apply it better than yourself. Doing so with nothing compelling you to other than it is the right thing to do.

That image has been shattered. I've been walking down memory recently. Thinking about how I've treated the women in my life. I have received some valuable insight as to what it must take to commit crime. All you have to do is believe in your heart that it isn't wrong. I was mean to them. I belittled them. I berated their intelligence. I uttered, and not once, phrases like, "You will learn your place." I did do some good things for them, but as it turns out, they weren't enough for the cost, which was their self worth. I treated them like they should be beholden to me for just being with them. I treated them like the world treats women - second rate. Only deserving of second place. To be seen and not heard. The one thing I thought I had actively avoided (by reading and re-reading copies of Lean In et al), I had become. It's interesting, isn't it, how you can be one thing to yourself and the complete opposite in reality and not even know it. Bad people must really believe they're changing the world. They must not know they're breaking it. Otherwise why would they?

The first step towards recovery is admitting there's a problem.

So, "Hi. My name is Colin, and I'm a male chauvinist."

END

band aid covers the bullet hole

Betrayal isn't ridiculous. It's the reason empires fall.

I remember the day my world came crushing down like it was yesterday. It wasn't, but I'm quite certain I will carry that burden for the rest of my life. That day, someone I thought I trusted with my very life let me down. A person I had elevated on the highest pedestal you can possibly elevate another proved themselves a mere mortal. They erred, and in so doing they made me think them less deserving of my reverence. It's been a long climb back up, but in that time I have seen in my life the veracity of time's healing nature. It hasn't ever gotten easier, and the burden hasn't gotten lighter, but I have gotten used to living with it.

I don't know if we ever really forgive people. I think one of the unique things about human beings is we were made able to spot patterns in the things around us. And that traits in behaviour are as strong a pattern as any. Let's say someone took your heart and stomped on it, broke it into a thousand pieces. And then came and picked them all up and put it back together. You might forgive them, and you might even let them back in, but is it ever the same again? Is it ever as pure as it was the first time? Are they ever the god they were before they betrayed your trust? The body recovers. Physical fractures and cuts heal. But does the heart? I don't know that the first cut is really the deepest. I think it's just the deepest till the next one. You never get used to it. Every time you get cut, it hurts just as bad as the other times.

So anyway, what to do when that person strikes again and sinks even lower?

The first time I felt like I was the one violated. I felt like I was forced to make a sacrifice that someone in my station shouldn't be made to make. I did it for what I thought was a noble reason, so I don't regret that, but I resented the fact that I was cornered. And now I just got through listening to how the same person devoured another's spirit. It's not really unique to us this occurrence. It's not an original story; it just hasn't ever been close to me before. Like how we all know death exists but don't feel it until it touches us personally. I'm scared to be alone because of the things I think about. I don't want to fall into that trap of dissociating everything amazing someone has done for you because of that one bad thing they did that hurt you - no matter how bad it was. Even when they do it again, that's still just two times, right?

I'm watching a show called Betrayal. I know, everyone says it's only TV, but I think that's rhetoric people say because they have subconsciously been conditioned to say it by pop culture; like making fun of that Kardashian show or extolling the purity of Android because of its openness. To me, it has always been uncanny how much TV can cut across to real life. How you can see in the cast things you are going through or have been through. They say on that show that if you spend time wishing for someone to go through fire for what they did to your heart, then you're allowing them to hurt you a second time in your mind.

I need time to come quickly and cover this hole that I'm falling into. I need to stop here and move on to happier thoughts.

END