Chapter 7
I live with a beast. I know deep down she's familiar but she feels so estrange sometimes.
She.
Yes "she" because she comes from women of the past, my mother of course and her mother also. But it's not just from blood that i got her. This beast i have is the piece of a way bigger one, broken and dispersed in every women who exists and who ever existed. Forged in fear, anger, violence and grief very long ago when half of humanity created differences and declared them wrong.
That was indeed very long ago and i wish it would show. I wish we could think about it and find it funny and ridiculous ; "they were so silly back then !". But the beast wrapped around my heart is enough evidence for you and me to understand that it still isn't the case. We are still so ridiculous.
Most of the time i don't even feel her, she is profundly sleeping. But.
But there are some times when something, a sentence, a piece of history, a painting, a story will shake my heart and wake her from her dream-rich sleep. And i will feel it all again. Anger and rage take the lead, while the fear and grief stays in the background like weeping little sisters, always the ones to protect. And for a moment i will feel the womens living in me, the ones 8 feet under and the ones next door. Raging, silently or not so silently. Feeling helpless or feeling like it's all too much. Feeling everything and nothing anymore.
Being human can be very difficult and being a woman even more, feeling the injustice like an old tradition and the existence of our rights like a never-ending battle.
Because we fought and won our basic rights, but we cannot hope for them to be written in stone or marble, we will always have to fights teeths and nails to keep them. At least for some years again.
The thing with our beast is that she is the memory of millions of unhealed women, hoping for the better, stoping to believe it could happen, trying to change things, too tired and scarred to do so, too emprisonned to even think about it, too disgusted with the idea of feminity to accept being a woman because how could she accept something that brought her so much aching and horror ?
How can you find hope when even when it comes to your own mother sometimes the only thing you inherit is resentment, resentment that isn't even hers but passed down by every women before her. And here it is. The poisoned gift.
Will you open it ? Will you start everything over again ? Or are you brave enough to offer a different gift to your daughter ? A different gift to yourself ? Are you willing to stop this vicious circle and free your ancestors spirits ?
Beware, woman. They say it's the witch path you are taking. Of course ! you are using a mind of your own and acting freely, what did you expect ? But don't worry they can't burn us anymore, we can continue working with the devil.
So for all the women, scared, fearless, hopeful, hopeless, old, young, witch, healer, slut, chaste, for those who did a lot and those who couldn't do more than exist. For those who thought and still think embracing the oppression will give them freedom and safety, i see you and free you. You have an eternal right to rest as a soul and not as an oppressed woman anymore. We will heal the beast and care for it as best as we can until all we are left with is a bird without this old purpose, that we will all be able to let happily go of.
E.L :•