What do you think of this or that? She asked

What he said
What she said
But mainly what he said cos he’s the authority on pretty much everything, I have made him into a false god, he knows everything…

I want to know your thoughts

My thoughts?
I don’t have any
Mine don’t matter, are not important
What I think and feel is unsubstantiated, can’t be backed up, as yet unproven
You can’t take me seriously
Others laugh at me, think I am idealistic, unrealistic
I regurgitate, spew up whatever you tell me, rather than risk the ridicule, the ostracisation
Rather than risk my heart with you, rather than risk your disapproval

I have become a regurgitator
Telling you what I think you want to hear
Parroting what others have told me what I heard, even out of context
I would rather be wrong about what you or others said than risk my heart on my sleeve

I am small and curled up tight
Protecting myself
I have embraced the belief that being a female means I am useless with nothing to say, no worthy words or expression
What have I got to say? Men say it better
I am a stupid woman, write me off cos of my sex
Dismiss me, I am female

I do what you say
Men are far more important
I am but a lowly woman
As a woman I was born to support
Born to bare children and fulfill the sexual wants, needs and desires of men
I am nothing without men
Without a particular man, first dad, second a husband and third sons
These men decide my worth, my value, my very existence
I am nothing without them

Lowly female am I
Irrational, emotional, nothing to give the world, no legacy
Defined by my father, brothers, husband and sons

Seeking approval acceptance and equality from the people least likely to ever give it to me
They withhold it and so I seek it more

Desperate

What I don’t see and don’t want to admit is I already have worth, acceptance, approval, equality and love from those who love me

Yet I seek hardest from those who want to control me and have power over me
I give the power and my desire to the dark side
Distortedly hoping somehow they will see their error and the damage it does and want to change and treat me better

Arrogantly I believe I have a chance but really its a dark dance, a swirling frenzy, a trick to fool, delude, and deny to myself
That actually when it comes down to it I want to avoid the pain of feeling unloved
Avoid the pain and heart ache, I want someone else to change

But that’s not how it works
I can feel how I feel but others can choose and it is their choice to decide

I have been a regurgitator both in thought and action
Regurgitating other peoples thoughts, ideas, feelings, living others desires, demands and expectations
regurgitating what others believe.

Free flow of my injured feelings towards myself, about myself and my self expression

I have had times were I felt uncomfortable with saying exactly what I feel, think, believe in my own words (though sometimes I escaped myself and it all poured out regardless).

I felt that what I had to say didn’t matter much
that it would be judged
that it was stupid
some things I felt couldn’t be backed up by evidence
I had no proof even though I felt them strongly
I had fear about expressing parts of myself I perceived would be attacked.
In the past I did a lot of back tracking when things spilled out of me, a lot of re phrasing so I was palatable and had the illusion of being accepted.

I had reasons and justifications to not clearly express and communicate my feelings, beliefs and thoughts.
Like:

• What do I know?
• I have no experience
• What I say, think or feel doesn’t matter anyway
• Others are clearer and more articulate than me
• I don’t have good ideas, never have
• I know nothing
• My thoughts, feelings and self expression doesn’t matter, is not important.

Ironically to be myself I must express myself
know my heart and what is in it
Speak up, be myself and share myself
And this requires knowing and being articulate
Being myself is a requirement

I am uncomfortable
I fear it.
I am angry, rageful, furious, and defeated.
I have beliefs about it and this is what I have found (so far), I feel:

• I am a stupid woman
• Females don’t have original thoughts
• Females thoughts and feelings don’t matter
• Females are not as educated as much as men
• Females are no good
• Males know more, are better, are the authority

I have found I want to defer to men like my dad.
I want to comply.
I want to be told what to do.
I want to be an extension of daddy because to not be highlights all kinds of pain at how wrong this relationship was.

When I realised this I got a bit hysterical.
I had the facade of being an independent woman and I thought about the fierce feminists and women angry at men who proved their worth who I grew up around.
I am not one of them.
I had the illusion of being so but underneath I have not so subtly or secretly been agreeing with what I was taught by the men and women in my family (I was taught not by their words but by the feelings, beliefs and the actions they took that reinforced their error and taught me to doubt love; that I was not worth loving).
Taught that: I am an unintelligent woman who must comply with the desires and wants of men (and certain types of women).

Beliefs flow out of me, false I now know, but they have previously dictated my life. I believed:

As a woman my sex defines me.
As a woman I have to prove myself .
But it will never happen because being female means in men’s (dad’s) eyes I am not equal,
I am less than,
I am lower case,
I have roles: wife, mother, sex provider, these are my parameters my defined lines to exist within.

That is what I have attracted.
That is what I have raged about and in my heart agreed with,
That I am only useful as what a man desires,
I am only worth what a man tells me I am,
I am an object, I belong to my dad, my husband, my children they define me, they own me.

All this is false and untrue.

As a result of these false beliefs I have competed with men, fought to prove myself, demanded equality which has not been given and never will be by those who feel superior.
I have rebelled or complied with the false premises my dad, mum instilled in me as a little girl and that the world reinforced as I grew.

I would take snippets, parts or the whole thing, sometimes reword or re phrase but essentially regurgitate what others already had thought or decided.
And then package it as ‘mine’, as me.

But it’s not.

I get tongue tied expressing myself.
I skip over and around,
Begin in the middle unstructured, un-thought out, all over the place, incoherent.
I feel angry about clearly expressing myself.
I will be terrified about what will happen to me if I stick by my thoughts and feelings if I have no back up nothing to regurgitate.
But how can it be backed up if its a new discovery?
Like in science what if what has been ‘proved’ has been proved wrong?
I have based my whole existence my definition of myself, what I believe is woman and man on false premises, on what generations before me have accepted.
And I now feel much of it is untrue.
But on some things I have no proof of another way yet
And feeling something isn’t credible I have been told
It puts me in a position of being unstable

Am I prepared to feel and take actions:
To express myself
Be myself
Disagree with my family
Disagree with the world
Have courage
And without proving myself, imposing my beliefs or demanding change or acceptance, just be and speak what I feel think and experience?

I have been afraid to do this.
Afraid of the perceived attack.
But mainly angry at how uncomfortable I feel.
Afraid that I will be ‘wrong’ (in whose eyes?) and punished for it

Expressing myself in the past came with rules and things acceptable and unacceptable

I cannot speak about being male and maybe men feel this way too?
What I know is how constricted I feel, how oppressed, how much I feel I have to be what others dictate in order to be accepted
I didn’t feel accepted
I haven’t felt free to express myself in a society of unsaid and unmentioned rules about what men or woman can say, do and be.

And so I regurgitate, spew up, to avoid feelings, to avoid me.

I am a regurgitator…

Eloisa, 23 November 2020

*** A rant of uninhibited thoughts when I was feeling some feelings about myself, my beliefs about being female, my relationship with my parents and my resistance (anger to fury) about expressing myself clearly. It started out as a poem but turned into a kind of poem/rant/pouring out of thoughts & feelings.

Take this as what it was, me processing my own personal pain and injuries, not the truth, but an expression of where I was at on this day in November.