Growing Into A Child

The shield I’ve been trying to destroy for the past five years is starting to grow again.

A woman subject to casual sexism, pressurised into fitting into a box of expectations, judgement and judgement and judgement, is bound to erupt at some point in her life. I’m close to tears, and I’m sitting in front of a pedestal fan, sipping honey milk from a cup bearing the memories of a fifteen year old.

Anybody will tell you, at least most people will, that there is some sense of calmness and fulfilment associated with reaching young adulthood – it’s the realisation that your adolescent dreams can most possibly materialise. Being someone who grew up an unconventional child, it took me more than just a minute to grow into my body and grow onto my personality. To convince yourself that you don’t need to be a certain diameter to wear something that you’ve seen on the television (what are you, a pipe?), to learn to trust your gut when you’ve been ridiculed all your life for being clumsy, for being loud, for being unsuspecting, naive and to not be emotionally dependent and to yearn for the comfort you’ve never felt – it takes time.

And for someone to break a foundation this intricately built – it’s like you’re breaching my walls with acid, eating away the concrete and vaporising the climbers. Flowers disappear into thin air.

It takes a good while to run away from an expectation, to grow the guts to wish and to convince yourself of a life you wish. When you’re a woman surrounded by women who aren’t happy, you are bound to radicalism. You’re bound to dream, to push yourself everyday inhumanely, beating yourself up for not being better than you already are. Seldom will you run into a woman who slacks. Seldom will you run into a woman who is under-qualified. Seldom will you meet a woman who depends.

Seldom will a woman be sane, forgiving and relaxed. I’ve been told by lovers that I’m too tightly wound, I care too much about As and Bs – they’re just letters, I’ve been told my mental disposition depends a little too much on my professional goals for it to be healthy anymore. A man, at least an immature one, fails so horrendously to see and empathise. To see. I’d be glad if I run into a man who wouldn’t blame me for how I am and how I feel.

There’s logic, accountability and rationality, and then there’s sympathy, comfort and reassurance.

Breaking these walls and telling myself that I need to be human now took me a while. To be able to show myself more at the dinner table, pass a joke around and let myself feel like the carefree, unhateful child that I’ve never been, to feel light and feathery and feel like life is a walk in a garden with pastries and baked goods and books and pearl necklaces and peaches and tea and wine and the aroma of roasted coffee and running and searching and searching and researching and reading into the night and reading into the morning and typing and typing and typing and getting every word out and feeling like a child again – as I’ve most probably overstated – took me a while.

I’ve been fighting my whole life – knowingly and unknowingly – and the only difference now is I’m an adult. I won’t cry into a pillow anymore.