Femininity
Facebook, do you really want to know what’s on my mind, or it is just a cliche . Well, before you change your mind on that question, I was thinking before you asked the question and the thought left immediately I saw that question.
Well, come to think of it, today is women’s day, and yesterday, just about the worst of things happened to a woman. What a coincidence! Too bad sometimes we feel like an endangered specifies. “This is a Man’s world” sang someone some decades ago. So, Facebook, do you still want to know what’s on my mind…
Femininity
She would talk to anyone that would show an interest in listening, sometimes. I have found myself engaging in a conversation with a complete stranger in a matatu and be in utter shock when am alighting and he requests my phone number, am like, “we’re not there yet bro.” Other times I would want to honestly offer my number but the person does not ask, “really, now.”
Femininity
If she does not have physical friends at a particular time, then she would come up with a whole committee in her head to analyze a matter. The committee would create a thought in her head and have her toss and turn through the night as she thinks.
Well, it is the same committee that would have her texting you at night and telling you how sorry she is for something she did and you can’t even remember. Sometimes she would write you a whole pdf in the wee hours of the night and expect you to send one right back. Unfortunately, the response she gets is mostly, “Okay.” Well, now that am writing, I wonder what response I would expect after sending a 400-word essay to someone who is half-asleep.
Femininity
The committee in my head would have me window shopping online at 2 am and saying things like, “It is not even expensive.” Mind you, I don’t even have a dime to my name. This same committee would have me replay an argument I have with my boyfriend during the day and give me pointers that I would have used. If am wise enough, I would let it slide, but sometimes I would just create a rematch.
Being a Woman Entails countless transitions
It entails being bombarded by way too many transitions at a go. It is juggling so many caps at a go. One minute you’re saying to him, the next you have to cross your fingers and hope that his friends like you because they have a say. Then you have to go for a few days of fast if you are spiritual and hope his mother adores you.
Before you can even blink, man is down and you have a ring. You already said “yes” or was it ” I do?”… Catch a breathe a little. Baby number one, the little angel wakes you up with screams at night and looking at your side, the father is snoring, undisturbed. Gal toto, you are balancing tears and the committee did not leave when you said “I do.”
The committee is either making you feel like the victim because, “how could he be sleeping and I thought we were in this together.” Worse, the committee would gang up on you and try to make you feel like a failure in motherhood. The situation is even worse if you are at the same time-fighting post partum depression. You wonder if 2:30 am is a good time to just call your mum and say hi. But then again, they gave you a bed during your wedding day; why do they do that though? It is traumatizing.
Being a woman entails emotional roller coasters
I might show you the glass half-empty and talk about labor pangs that I have not even experienced or crazy cramps that come without fail. I might share about the days I am not myself and am balancing tears because the committee said am a big girl now.
Or the days I do not want to get out of bed because I have just had it up to here ( I hope you can picture this). I can talk about character development as we like to call it nowadays, and the lessons that I never seem to learn. I can talk about the expectations I have tried to meet and failed terribly, both mine and from other people. But then again…
Femininity and everything else in between
It is all that I have said, and then some. It is putting on make-up and wearing those heels and a handbag without any cash (I know). It is waking up each day and smiling at the world as if your pillow is not wet with tears. It entails not allowing that little girl in me not to be contaminated by negative vibes.
It is allowing that little girl to be herself sometimes. It is allowing her to cry when she needs to and giving her room to make that hearty laugh when she is happy.
Femininity and Vulnerability
It is about being vulnerable. It is about trusting again and again even after shit happens. Just believing that the next one will work out. It is about smiling back at a stranger sometimes and hoping that he is not some serial killer on the loose.
It is about forgetting sometimes, forgetting the hurt you went through so that you can grow, or the pain you went through so that you can bring baby number two. Sometimes, even forgetting that the mother-in-love doesn’t like you so that you can go to ushago this Easter with a gift.
Being a Woman
Sometimes, it is about not even knowing what you want. And it is totally fine.
