Death and the Cides
On Being a Woman
Trigger Warning — Content contains mention of suicide and death
2000
Today is the day before Memorial Day, another long, lonely three-day weekend for me.
Memorial Day is the day when we remember those who are no longer with us. The year 2000 for me so far is a year of death. The year began with me questioning my own desire to go on. Two weeks later, my boss’s son was killed in a car wreck, and many more deaths have ensued.
Death is all around me; I even work in the death care industry.
I feel such ambivalence on the weekends. My isolation enrages me; I would so much rather be out doing the things I want to do, being fed by the energy of others; yet once I start going into myself I really don’t want to be bothered by anyone.
Spanish is running through my head, from the Santana CD and the new Spanish language CDs I have just gotten. I now have a driving urge to learn the Spanish language. I think this thrust has to do with my burning desire to propel myself out of my victim persona and into my true, though foreign and exotic, identity. Clearly, my stupid victim persona is not truly me. How could it be, as driven and aggressive and angry as I am.
The whole ugly situation with my boss Mark has brought this victim/ perpetrator — homicide/suicide issue to a head. The thing about women is that they are programmed to believe they could be capable of suicide but not of committing homicide. How clever men are, protecting themselves from our rage.
So we kill ourselves, we women; mass suicides, decade upon decade. The virgins in the movie killed themselves, all flowing and blonde, the pulsating sexuality that had nowhere to go. We kill ourselves, deaden ourselves, silence ourselves, always. We have no volition, no voice. We are simply something to look at and to penetrate. We are nothing, nowhere, nada.
We are mandated to be tall and willowy, to have flowing blonde hair. We have to act a certain way and say certain things and even then we don’t exist.
My rage about this feels homicidal. We are a ferocious lot, we females, the ferocity bred into us from our need to survive.
My homicidal impulses were simply one more thing that confused me when I was a child. There were so many things about me that were un-girl- like, and I could never decide what that meant about me. Was it bad to fail at being a girl? It didn’t seem bad to me, since being a girl was the same as being dead.
I did know it was something I could never talk about to anyone, through my whole childhood and beyond. I had to stay hidden and silent if I wanted to survive at all. And I did want to survive, even a phony, stupid existence, on the remote chance that someday the tides would change and I would find an opportunity to sort out my confusions and discover my true identity.
Indeed the tides finally have changed in many ways. At the very least, women have gained a voice and a certain amount of economic power. The gains we have made come from an entire century of certain women being strong and courageous and intractable. Had it not been for these women, circumstances would have never permitted me to enter the darkness of my past to ultimately discover my true identity.
It is with the most profound pride that I now identify myself with these brilliant and courageous women. It is for those who follow me that I will emerge from my darkness, speak out and leave behind my stupid, silent suicidal self.