Why burn your bra... when you can be all woman... frills and all... (another note on love or something like it)

I've said this before, and I'll say it again... I'm a feminist, but I'll still wear my bra, occasionally wear make-up, shave what I feel needs shaving, wear a dress when I want to... I celebrate my feminity and don't get women who think appearing androgynous is "hip".. I am a woman and I love it! I most definitely do NOT see why I must masculate (sic) myself to show that I'm a feminist....

Now that that's out of the way... let me rant... from my girl-in-a-frilly-dress feminist stance..

I am tired of hearing women pine about how inadequate they are.. or how they need a man to make them "whole".. Yes, Beyonce and Rihanna, I'm talking to you! I'm all for relationships, long walks off short bridges and watching large amorphous gases from another universe shine brightly over my head at dusk.. I really am... In fact I am more than a closet romantic. My flat smells of lavender and camomile and at one point I genuinely thought Prince Charmings exist... hmmm... I actually still do! I've watched The Notebook five times and have cried EVERY SINGLE TIME.. that said, my self-worth is not and cannot ever be "completed" by any one - male, female, goat or cow... I don't believe in being completed by anything or anyone, I believe in complementarity. I believe that people do not make us better, but that we are the only ones responsible for our own betterment.. So, no I will not be shaking my not so ample booty and asking some boy to put a ring on it 'cause he likes it... what's a piece of worthless jewellery anyway if the person who bestows it loves me not... wholly, truly and completely?

I fear that most of us are not honest with ourselves... those of us who claim it (I suppose I should include myself here) often find ourselves not pursuing our own goals, but those of a society that has never really cared much for our enhancement... So, here's to firmly putting your feet on the ground, mastering your destiny and not making excuses. If Prince Charming happens to stop in his modern chariot, then good for him, but he better know the wonders of a push-up bra wearing empowered 21st century woman...

It's 2009... I cook, I clean, I like the smell of roses, I know how to tie a tie... I also wake up early to go to work, make my opinion heard in meetings full of testosterone and chauvinistic male egos, do what needs doing and do it pretty darn well... I'm also not afraid to say it. Society placed a wall in front of me, I stood back and wondered whether to try go round it, dig a hole and go under it, go back from whence I came... or bulldoze my way through society's firm veil... 23years on, I look back at the dilapidated wall behind me... achievement it is, but with it I have lost my one key defence... I can no longer say "but I am a woman"... If the box needs lifting, let it be lifted... If the race needs winning... on your marks... get set....

Watching the world go by

The years melt away...as seconds become minutes, minutes become hours.. that become days, weeks, months... years.. And while so much seems to be changing, so much more remains the same. I am the girl I was years ago.. scared, vulnerable.. yet strong and determined.. constantly trying to better myself, to shed my burdensome skin of negativity and yet realising that the more I do it the more I lose myself.. Constantly asking myself, what I will leave when I'm done here.. shall my little steps one day change the world? My thoughts, they take me away.. to a place that may never exist.. they choke me and at the same time give me life...

Today... like yesterday... and the day before.. I continue to search for my purpose, my being, my soul, my dreams.. these things... inextricably linked, intertwined and forever keeping me away from the edge.. away from the abyss that one day will engulf me, eat me whole and never spit me out...

In my quest I have learnt to love, to hate, to cry, to laugh, to embrace and to strangle... all this I have learnt from the world from which I come and to which I shall go. I look at the world in awe as it refuses to change even as the years go by... adamant, stubborn... like myself as I spread my hands out once more as if to fly... I laugh. I cry. I want so much to fly and yet I know it can never be so...not today.. not tomorrow.. but maybe in the next life I will watch the world go by perched upon a tree... until then, the years melt away...

Love... or something like it...

Many lessons I've learned in this life of mine, yet none has quite managed to make me understand or truly know love... I know that I love, I know that I am loved... have loved... will love... but my conceptualization of love seems to differ from many people around me.. I have heard the 3words "I love you" said to a new paramour only weeks into the relationship like the premature ejaculate of an over-eager man... bile rose in my throat as I thought of the many lies that will follow this first one... I have heard them used after a "but" to excuse intentional transgressions.. I have heard them said between people who could possibly know no love... the words echo in my head like a broken record of a bad electro house song... I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you.. The more I hear them uttered, the more I feel they have no real meaning.. a cliche? Perhaps.

For me love is not just a feeling, love is action... Love is not an impromptu champagne picnic atop the Eiffel Tower on a warm spring night... it could be... but it's not... Love is found in the little things, in the little acts of selflessness, in devotion, in faith, forgiveness, in pain... love is hard work.. it is the patience you should have as you wait to reap the benefits of your commitment knowing that they may never come... it is giving more of yourself even when you feel there's nothing left to give. . . and yes, love can be a candlelit dinner with some prime cabernet sauvignon... but that is not the be-all and end-all of it.. the words of many a drunken clergyman come to mind: "through sickness and health".. oh indeed. for me, THAT is love. . . and because of that I am not sure I have yet loved wholly, truly and completely... I feel it coming.. a dark cloud on the horizon promising rain that will soak the earth and bring her to life... but when it arrives, whatever the love; platonic, erotic, agape, ludus, storge, pragmatic, manic, obsessive... I'll take mine with a pinch of salt, a lemon and tequila...