Women Like Me

It's weird baring my soul online for all to see. After my last post, I felt exposed. I went to bed early to escape the embarrassment. It's like all those gym class stories, in a way. Except only two people who know me in real life know about this blog, and only one reads it, so the embarrassment is at least mostly anonymous. Which is why I started this thing in the first place, I guess -- to have a place where I could whine about all the things that don't make me look so great, allowing anyone who wants to roll his or her eyes or curl a lip in disgust to do so without putting a friendship in jeopardy.

I can't figure it out -- should I be embarrassed? Am I ashamed for not being one hundred percent "over" the things my father said to hurt me, or am I embarrassed that I am/was the kind of person to whom such things could be said? I suppose it's both. And since this is the place where I can write the ugly stuff, I'm writing it. Because for better or worse, I am the kind of person to whom such things were said, and I am the kind of person who is still not completely "over it" all these years later despite having moved on and found happiness.

When I was no older than ten, I was riding home from a Boy Scout outing I had tagged along on since my mother was one of my brother's troop leaders. I heard on the radio some mention of the Equal Rights Amendment. I asked my mother what it was, and she gave me a very brief explanation: an amendment that would give women the same rights that men have. That evening at dinner I tried to prove that although I was the youngest and usually in the dark about politics and the like, I was now getting pretty smart indeed.

"I think the E.R.A. is a good idea!" I said with such childish enthusiasm.

My father whipped his head around and shot me a look of fury the likes of which I had never seen before. What he said next I never forgot, mostly because it was such a mystery to me.

"There are names," he sneered, "for women like you."

My first point of confusion was what I had done to anger my father, how political talk, which happened at our dinner table all the time, could upset him so much. My second point of confusion was that I was not a woman. I was just a kid. Maybe he wasn't talking to me? True, it is possible he was speaking to my mother in a passive-aggressive way since she was surely the one who had put such an idea in my head. But the glare was in my direction, no doubt about it. I remember trying to think up one name for "women like me," one insult bad enough to match the venom in his voice. I didn't know any names that bad.

What my father and I usually butted heads about was my body -- typically my weight, but occasionally a skirt that he deemed too short or the legs he wouldn't let me shave when I was in seventh grade. I always thought it was about my being fat and/or physically disgusting: I needed to lose weight and would not be worthy until I did so, and therefore my legs were different from the skinny girls' legs and did not merit being shaved or being visible. It was all because I was fat, you see.

When I think about the E.R.A. incident, however, I have to laugh because I realize the conflict wasn't only about my body -- in fact, I would dare to say that it wasn't even mostly about my body. The problem was always that he saw in me a feminine strength that threatened him. Why else would he think of such "names for women like you" when he looked at his pre-adolescent daughter? I scared him.

Someone pointed that out to me a long time ago, but I didn't see it. It took me a long time to realize it was true, that my dad, whom I had always seen as larger than life, was fallible, that he just didn't know what to do with me.

I still scare him.

Lately I have found myself in a position of power over him from time to time. It is strange. He screws up, and the natural consequences just knock him off his feet, and I find myself standing over him, looming larger than I meant to be. I nearly always feel sorry for him. I help him up, or I turn away and let him keep his dignity as he picks himself up.

I don't want to dishonor my father. But I don't want to protect him anymore. Just as I am angry with myself for speaking of all this, I am angry with myself for keeping silent. I couldn't find the words to say no when he wanted to weigh my children -- my husband was the one who spoke up. I couldn't even find the words to tell my father he was no longer going to be left alone with my children after this incident.

I am embarrassed that I dwell on past wrongs, and I am embarrassed that my father can still say and do such cruel things. I am embarrassed that I have not protected my father more, and I am embarrassed that I have not protected my children more. I am embarrassed because I can't forgive my father, and I am embarrassed because I can.