Forged Ideals

I learned to hate the idea of being a woman.

Our only purpose seemed to be to serve, to submit, to be silent and suffer.

I watched as my mother cried and begged church after church for forgiveness for a crime she had no choice in commiting.

Knowing her story, her suffering,

intimately by age 9,

I had wept with her and could not fathom the cruelty and audacity of all of those pious, holy hypocrites to find joy in her desperate pleas.

I learned that I was not as good as my brothers, I was weaker, more emotional, better suited for cooking and cleaning and laundry than sports or video games or cars.

I learned that my voice should never be heard when there is a man present, that if a man chooses to give you attention, you should always be polite and sweet and thankful.

I learned that I would never be smart enough to understand the things in a man’s world.

I grew up with the notion that women like my mother and I are not pretty enough, we should be grateful for any man’s attention, because we have brown hair, brown eyes, baby bearing bodies and deep sadness that no one could ever deal with.

I had more body hair than most boys in my 5th grade class, I was too short, my hair was never blonde, my eyes weren’t blue, my stomach never once flat enough despite years of not eating and vomiting constantly- all of this kept as a tally of my exact degree of worth, or lack thereof, in the back of my brain.

I learned that I looked so similar to my mother through any eyes but her own.

She could only look at me and see her past regrets, now I look at me and I see a nauseating blur of two people that broke and abandoned me.

And so I burned the idea that I could ever be a woman to the ground.

I longed to be anything *but* a woman, hoping that would be enough for my father to care, to rewrite my past through a new lens, give me new worth, allow me to enjoy the things that he did even though I was not born with the same body as my brothers, but it turns out I will never be a man either.

There is nothing left that feels like mine except the in between shades of bluish gray.

The absent, gaping void settled betwixt here and there.

I do not belong to either world and I never will.

But I will forge my own place for my younger self to find safety and sanctuary in- even walking through the flames of the hell I’ve been damned to.

I am a phoenix.

Even if it takes lifetimes to rise from the ashes of generational grief.