Seems like every week another man murders his wife or child or girlfriend. Women will fearlessly stay in an abusive relationship with someone who beats her every night for 40 years, but a man loses his job and can't handle his emotions long enough to not kill someone.
Am I the only one who sees this or are we all just pretending and tiptoeing around men even when its clear they're bonkers, like we just did for four entire years of our lives with our ex president? We behave as if we are all in an abusive relationship with patriarchy. Because we are.
You know why I say this in my diary? It's anonymous. You think I'd share this in an instagram story? Hell no. Instead I continuously quietly filter messages from every man who message me as if I'm their mother/therapist, all these crying male babies coming to me for comfort like I'm the goddamn Oracle of Delphi.
I don't have a mother to cry to, but they do, so why are they barking up my tree? Fuckboys who weren't there for me are now like "I need to talk to someone." Someone. I didn't hear my name in there.
I finally got smart and joined the army of women who filter all their posts to 'close friends only' because I only just now discovered I can use that list to make myself invisible to straight men. I keep missing texts from my dad because I keep my phone on night mode 24 hours a day to avoid phone calls from specific men, when I should just bite the bullet and block these pesty unwanted callers.
I wish I didn't need to spend so much of my life defensively protecting myself from men so I could just... live. I swear women need to be tactical military level experts just to defend our bodies and minds from the constant threat of invasion.
Welp it's a new day in my walled fortress with locks, cameras, and security guards between me and the world below. I'm grateful I have all that, it's just a shame I need it. I used to feel so safe when I was young. Maybe it was partly illusion but times were different too. I used to go everywhere alone then, every day, all the time, without fear, and without this constant mistrust of men that I hadn't yet learned to have, although even then I knew to align myself with gay men, who enjoyed male privilege enough to share some of that privilege with me without any expectation of fucking them, and lesbians who wouldn't treat me as competition for male prizes I never wanted.
I'm not asexual, I'm just more selective now about who is worth sexually opening up to. I'm a long term bonder in a shallow throw away society. It's not self pity, it's just the truth. And I'd have kids if I'd ever felt that I could trust someone else to co-parent equally and if I could be assured the world would be a safe place for my kids. But it's not and so my bloodline will die, by choice.
Regardless, everyone needs gratitude for what's right in the world. Today I'm grateful for that streak of sunlight on my cat's face, grateful for the quiche and au gratin I cooked this week, grateful I am such a good cook at a time when that has become a necessary survival skill, grateful for memes and humor, grateful for a consistent sleep schedule, grateful for meditation for making everything more manageable, grateful for the experience of life, grateful for dreams, grateful for my ancestors and the perfect grandparents I was so lucky to have, grateful for this roof over my head, grateful that I can spend my time in any way I choose, grateful covid happened after I'd gathered some wisdom and patience instead of a decade ago when I'd probably have been a frazzled ball of anxiety and overwhelming emotion. In fact I think my age is the thing I'm most grateful for of all. I don't understand anyone who wants to be younger.
8:04 a.m. - 2021-01-23