February 26th 2024

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I want to write about love but also how I want to write about how angry I’ve been. How tired I am of being angry. I’ve never been someone to boast about being a feminist because at this point I am still struggling to wrap my head around how feminism is not just another part of basic human decency. (Avoids opening a can of worms and more anger around all basic human decency here) It’s so easy to just make a blanket statement like, “I’m angry at men '' Every woman has too many stories of gender-based injustices: the disrespect, the scrutiny, the belittlement. How we’ve been marked as sensitive and irrational because we feel our emotions and work through them. I have seen grown men at work get angry and become physically violent because of it, but god forbid a woman become enraged and raise her voice about something. I’m not here to talk about that, because we’ve all already lived it, and if you’re a man who isn’t sure what I mean by this, start paying better attention, because it’s not my job or any other woman's job anymore to explain it.

Recently I was blasting the song “Nothing Matters” By The Last Dinner Party in my car. It gives me some kind of Cyndi Lauper dance-in-my-kitchen-feels that I really need lately. One of the lines in the song is, “I will fuck you, like nothing matters!” As I was driving I pulled up to a stop light next to a man whose windows were also rolled down. I Immediately turned the volume down in fear that he would look over or hear the lyrics. It isn’t that I’m embarrassed, it's just that I am afraid of men. My whole life I have attempted to avoid being a target for men, so much of what I do is focused around safety in a way that men often don’t have to think about. I’ll call a Lyft to a few houses away from mine so no one ever knows which house I live in. I’m angry from going on dates where I wasn’t offered company on a walk back to my car, because once a man grabbed my arm on the sidewalk and told me I was pretty because they thought for some reason that my body is fair game to them just for existing. I quit dressing in a feminine way that I enjoyed years ago, I stopped shaving my legs, started dying my hair, my attempt to become invisible to men and their gaze. I don’t flash a smile or flirt for better tips because I want men to be afraid of me back, or at least, respect me for something other than the way I present myself to them. 

I’m angry that men can claim to love me and lie to me all in the same conversation. I’m angry that the mothers of many men I’ve dated have thanked me for caring for their son, as if they couldn’t do it without her and I. At one point in my life, this was a form of praise, as if equating my value with my usefulness to a man. Now? Now I’m angry because a man has never been my reason for any of my own success, yet we’re expected to be the reason for theirs. 

Years ago I got off work and had a drink with some co-workers. I am one of five women that work with a staff of thirty men. As I sat down one was rating women that I personally knew on a scale of 1-10 and explaining why. Without a second thought I called him out on how childish and disrespectful this was, he laughed and told me I was just mad because I was, “Barely a 6”. The kicker? A guy I was seeing was sitting right next to him laughing, he couldn’t understand why I stopped seeing him after this. I don’t care if they were sorry, I didn’t care if it was a joke. I got up, I left, and I was angry. I wasn’t angry because I was “a six” I was angry that I had spent years of my life behind a bar forced to hear conversations between drunk men, how laughable it is that it was ever fair to consider them superior or more rational than women. The audacity, that this boy thought my idea of MY self worth could ever depend on an opinion from someone who was morally bankrupt in regards to how how fuckable I was. THAT is what made me angry.  

I work in a male dominated environment, where I’ve chosen certain battles while shrugging off a lot of the locker room banter. I know at the end of the day that all men aren’t bad or evil. If anything I am lucky to work around a lot of men who have dulled that anger and want to learn and be better. Men that are apologetic for past generations and working on making the world a better and safer place for women and any people who are often less represented and respected. Men who ask if I want some company when walking back to my car but respect me if I tell them no. Men who are trying to make a safe space for all people in a culture and setting where it’s easy for someone to become a target. But I’m still angry, I don’t ever want to be idolized as the love of someone's life, I want to be idolized for being the love of my own damn life. I want to see the wonderfully bright and strong and compassionate women I know be valued for what they really are, and if they’re not  I want them to leave. I want other women to clap and cheer and tell each other they’re doing a good job for walking away from people or careers that aren’t serving them anymore. I don’t want to give them sympathy, because standing up to men and putting yourself first takes courage, and people deserve to be celebrated for those things. Knowing what you want as a woman, (especially one who was raised to believe life was all about getting married and having children) is extremely difficult. If all I can do is start with a list of what I don’t want, I still trust I’m going in the right direction. I want to learn to create these boundaries of steel to protect the softness that I admire about myself. I want to be so fully and un-apologetically myself that I don’t have to second guess my own opinion, ever, especially when it comes to dating men. I want to stop being angry at men and start celebrating brilliant women.

It took me a long time before I learned softness and strong boundaries could co exist together, I don’t have to choose between the two any longer. I just have to learn how to choose the people and experiences that allow me to practice both without regrets. I have to learn to love and trust myself. I used to feel so angry about all the love I gave out as a free for all. The people I allowed in my life that did nothing but take and take while I gave and gave until there was nothing left for them. I wanted to rip all of that love back and stash it away in a box forever. Never allowing it to see daylight again. Now I’m seeing it all so differently. That that love is all theirs, and it’s theirs to keep. 

When I think about love it really is such a tricky little thing, the amount of ways that love flows in and out of my life is really never ending. I love to love. Love is an action, it’s a choice, and it’s a practice, where a lot of the time anger is just a reaction. I know this will sound ridiculous but just the other day I was slicing limes for the bar and I was excited about how perfectly ripe they all were. How every lime seemed to be picked at just the right moment, that every drink I was going to make for the day was going to get a lime that actually had juice come out of it, they weren’t bruised and they weren’t yellow. They were perfect. This lens is the one I want to hang on to. This is a weird part of loving your own life. While it’s so many other things, like when the dog puts its head perfectly on your feet when you’re thinking about getting up to get a pair of socks, or when your friend asks the server about your allergies before you have a chance to worry about it, when a coworker brings you your favorite drink and some snacks before your shift starts together, when someone gives you a handful of books that made them think of you, because they’re hoping you’ll enjoy the experience as much as they did. Love can look like singing Toby Keith on a car ride or just telling me the hard truths. Love is being invited over for dinner, having cookies dropped off on your doorstep, or a Valentine’s Day card sent by mail just as little reminder that you’re being thought of. Love forever keeps flowing, I just keep forgetting to pay attention to its many different forms it presents itself in. Here I’ve been feeling so alone, for being single and not having an immediate family when I’ve really been so loved all along. Love has never been grand gestures for me, it has never been monetary or reckless, it’s been simple and it’s been genuine and kind. I always say it doesn’t take much to make me happy, but damn those little gestures can fill my heart like I’ve won the lottery. So all that love I was mad about giving away, I’m not angry anymore. All of that love was genuine and it was real and it was raw, and I really meant it. If I loved you once, I’ll love you a little bit forever. It was given away with little to no requirements. I’m now refusing to let that part leave me just because I didn’t have my boundaries intact enough to protect myself, because in some ways that love has come back to me tenfold. I refuse to let myself harden and delve into a pit of misery because things didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to. I was sad, and then I was angry. Now I’m using that anger to be better, to make a life for myself that I’m in love with, that I wake up to everyday excited to live it again. It’s taken me years to learn to walk away from something that doesn’t serve me and I didn’t realize how heavy the weight had been. Coming to terms with myself and what I need isn’t easy, but I’m trying, and I’m more hopeful that it is worth it. I keep joking about how this is going to be my year of becoming unhinged, i’m opening it all up, it’s airing out, the hinges are busted and I’m letting everything come and go as it needs to. I’m ready to do what it takes to take all of this anger and turn it into what I need to learn to love my life and myself authentically. As long as I’m not hurting anyone in the process, I’m using this anger to take what I want from the world, to make my life just that, my life. I won’t sacrifice parts of myself for people who don’t recognize my worth any longer, because in my own avoidance I have been so blind to the amount of people that really do see it. Love manifests in countless ways, sometimes even through my anger, if only I pay attention.