Title : Needs Improvement
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Needs Improvement
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence. It is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
—Audre Lorde, A Burst of Light and Other Essays.
You are a warrior.
They have told you so, often. So it must be true. You certainly feel wounded enough. Then why do you not believe it? Why do you not feel like a warrior, here in bed, in the middle of the day for fuck’s sake, under your weighted blanket? The one given to you in a hard time by a fellow mother. One with real pain. With real problems, not of her own making.
Unlike you.
This is a fake problem of your own making. You did it to yourself, and now you need to find your own way up and out. You are responsible for your own happiness, and you are abdicating that responsibilty. The children are at school (you dropped them off today) and it’s quiet except for those goddamned parakeets. The bit of work you set out for yourself this morning is done, and you lack capacity for more. You read a few pages of a novel, but can’t seem to focus. It’s not a book you ordinarily would have chosen, but here you are, trying anyway.
Trying.
The tears come when you think about what the others might be doing right now. Your other family, the one you haven’t seen since winter and will never see again. Not ever. Not in the same way, at least. They took that, and it’s never coming back. Self-indulgent self-pity is not the same as self-care, is it?
Self-care. Ugh. The term is so corny. So First World, new-age journey, hot yoga, truth-living. You think about bubble baths and soft leggings that arrive in the mail wrapped in plastic, paid for with plastic. Fake. You know you don’t deserve these fake things, because apart from everything else, you are too sad to exercise, even though you know exercising will make you less sad. Ironic.
“Apart from everything else.” That was a great turn of phrase favored by someone you used to talk to every day, but aren’t allowed to anymore. You feel trapped under the weight of your own victimhood and inability to cede to bullshit. You never intended your voice to operate as an act of defiance, and yet it has done just that for as long as you can remember. Every other day in elementary school, you would end up on the green Naugahyde couch outside the principal’s office, waiting to be beckoned in and scolded.
“BEHAVIOR: NEEDS IMPROVEMENT.” (That was the worst mark available for behavior). It was on every report card. Sometimes it was even followed by two—TWO— exclamation points with a frowny face under the !!
Even now, you can see it.
You haven’t changed in any way that matters in the past three decades, and you’re not going to. So what will you do instead? You summon from memory a college text book—an Audre Lorde quote, and then descend into a Wikipedia hole, reading about her work, her poetry, her life. Now that’s a warrior.
Self-preservation as an act of political warfare. The idea resonates. You think about refusing to leave your home. Refusing to disrupt your children’s lives. Swipe-deleting toxic people. Shrugging as you give up on them. Ignoring them. The determination to continue existing and resisting and thriving where you are, as acts of both self-preservation and affirmative aggression.
Because that’s really what it is. It is an act of aggression and defiance simply to continue your work on this earth in the face of people who want you to shut up, get fucked, get raped, be broke, move away, die. They’ve told you all of those things too. They tell them to you every day. And yet here you are, still, anyway.
Maybe you can call yourself a warrior afterall.
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