Divided Currents

I am the age of

Divided Currents

Teenagers: exhausted exams,

Endless hunger, slammed doors,

Groups, gaggles of laughter.

Beauty maturing,

Pulling the future fearlessly forward,

With both hands, faster,

Faster, as months pass

Parents waiting in quieter houses.

Asking when we might visit next.

The sharp awareness of time.

Medical appointments and results.

Guilt that weighs heavy when I don't know....soon. Of course.

When things calm down.

Guilt is no longer sudden.

It is atmospheric, background, like

Low electrical humming.

Between them, work,

Finding time,

Fitting it in,

Time for marriage,

Friends,

Myself.

Awareness of my body changing.

Entire days spent giving pieces of myself away,

Until evening arrives,

With

Nothing

Left

But

Static.

Carrying tasks like fragile glass balls:

Drop one and someone

Somewhere

Will be

Wounded.

Meanwhile, around me,

A strange expectation we continue to appear

Beautiful through it all.

Beauty that I once inhabited carelessly, now

Exercise. Diet. Ritual. Discipline. Routine.

(Not be too beautiful you understand, or there's danger you are

Pulled

Apart

Entire narratives invented that reduce you:

Midlife crisis, botox.

Weightloss injections, designer bags.)

And if you do look better, you have "changed".

Because it's easier to criticise and project

Than feel unsettled.

Deep-rooted personal fears

Breed disappointing prejudice.

A reductive, empty attitude of what

A woman is.

A woman is not her face.

A woman is not her figure.

And yet: for some, she is.

For some, a woman is a target for projection,

Discussion,

Sexualisation.

For some, a woman is merely

What she weighs or

Whether an eyebrow has changed position.

For some, there is no

Nuanced understanding of

Challenges, complexities, overwhelm

Of an individual life.

Of how women are all different,

And every woman who knows,

Truly knows, that actually,

There are many different ideas

Of what a woman is

and can be and should be

and has to be and wants to be

and needs to be and

desires to be and

finds herself to be.

Complex, chaotic, creative,

Funny and furious.

Loud and loyal,

Messy and miserable,

Regretful, rude, romantic.

Intuitive, intelligent, inspiring,

Empathetic and empty.

Wise and weary,

Ambitious, articulate, angry.

We

Are

Not

One

Thing

I

Will

Not

Be

Reduced

To

Your

Insecure

Mirror

So women learn early.

The world forgives us more easily

When we are pleasing to look at.

(Just not too pleasing, remember).

My body feels like betrayal.

Even though this is nature in a season.

Heat, pain,

Anxiety, anger,

Unpredictable, endless sleepless nights of

Exhaustion.

My rituals are not from vanity.

They come from longing.

From wanting, still,

To feel alive inside my own life, my own self

My own skin,

And not merely useful.

My place in the world is not dependent

On what others think.

So laugh at, mimic, criticise, gossip, stalk.

I understand why.

People who tell on themselves are useful information.

I am accountable.

I have integrity,

Awareness,

A desire to make the world a little easier

For those around me.

(Not everyone now, you understand;

My heart used to be softer.

Middle age does that).

Sometimes when I hear the right music,

See myself In the right lighting.

I see the angle of my jaw,

I feel the force of my own blood.

I am timeless.

I am unapologetic about taking up the space.

My space,

LMy place in

My life. It is mine.

It

Is

Mine.