The experience of a women can jump between to two things: hysteria and terror or complete helpless joy. I believe that I have stayed in the middle for most of my recent waking moments.
I've never been good at happiness. I mean, I've spent most of my life completely unhappy so the feeling of joy has been but a fleeting memory, but now I feel myself completely helpless and lost in my own intense ecstasy. However, when joy has sprung int my life like a tree in early spring, I can't help but worry about a winter's snow storm to come. I can't help but worry I am in a dream, and that I will wake up and be back to the shell I was. Like soon I will be back in the nightmare that has tainted my life. Everything just feel so sweet and maybe I should just accept it but I can't help but worry.
I've worried about the stupidest things all my life, I worry abut my hair, my voice, how I'm holding my hands, what I touch first on my plate, what I spend my time doing, and much more. Many of my worries evolve around my appearance. I have had a love/hate relationship with my body and appearance for years, I have teetered on an eating disorder and almost smashed mirrors. But on other days, I see myself as someone deserving of the label pretty. Still it circles back to my worries and my dependence on others views of me. I hate to admit it, especially being a hardcore feminist, but do I count under the male gaze? Is my appearance good enough to be objectified? Or am I just a girl with misplaced confidence.
This desire to be objectified, I can only pin point it to passed abuse. I feel stupid that I can't heal, it's been years and months and I can't seem to let go being hurt. But maybe working through these repressed feelings and struggles is good for me. I have people who love me enough to walk with me through fire, so maybe healing won't be so bad this time.
“Some people—and I am one of them—hate happy ends. We feel
cheated. Harm is the norm. Doom should not jam. The avalanche stopping
in its tracks a few feet above the cowering village behaves not only
unnaturally but unethically.”
―
Vladimir Nabokov,
Pnin