when pregnant with my first, a lot of people {women} i knew back then wanted to know if i was eager for this baby to be a girl. no, i said. anything but! {which left the only other -- technical -- option wide open...}. huh?! most of them replied. you don't want a girl? no, thanx... i'd reply again. i don't want a girl... i don't get girls.. i don't like girls... but... you are a girl!? yeah... i suppose so... but no, if i had the choice, i'd want this baby to be a boy. and thankfully, it was...the whole idea of being pregnant has - on hindsight - been a complete freak-out to begin with. the fact that my body was doing this - growing a baby inside, preparing for the birth and the nurturing of the end-result - confused me beyond understanding, and i switched off from how i actually felt about it until many years after the fourth {fourth!!!!!!!!!?!!!} child was born. looking back i feel my life has had a Middle Eight, in which i took to being a female quite okay, did the wife thing, the mother thing, the sex thing. and now that it's over, it sometimes feels like another lifetime had been planted into the carefully routed out space that spanned from my 21st till i was 36. maybe it was the hormones, that took over the way i usually felt about doing woman things. they appear to have kicked in a few years before, cos i undeniably wanted to find a male partner to be with, to spend my life with, to do Normal Things with, things that all my friends did without questions. and now that i have kids, and love them to the moon and back, the Nurturing Mum side keeps popping out as if i have no control over it.
i now get why i never got life when i was growing up. i now understand why it always felt like i was weird. beyond the normal teenage feels of feeling odd. it wasn't {just} because i was an introvert, or highly sensitive, or shielded from the harshness of the world by my mum {cos she didn't want the same crap to happen to me as did to her}. it was because i didn't have a clue who the fuck i was... i never identified as a girl. i always identified with boys, but i knew i wasn't one of them. and i read books, and was scared of aggression.... i identified as a sissy... and i really liked boys. i whatever form they came - male or female...
for the past 10 years, i've been able to find a lot of info on the internet {long live the internet!!} about this kind of thing, though mostly it's about men who were clear about the change they wanted to make, or women who felt that dressing up wasn't enough anymore. fantastic, i'd think while reading about them, or watching films, lightly envious. it must be great to be clear about which direction you want to go in, to be clear about the body you're certain you wish to live in, other than the one you were born in. cos i feel no such thing... i don't want to dress as a man, or identify as a man. nor do i want to dress or identify as a woman... i feel like something in between. a mixture of both, or neither specifically...
in these times the information may be more easily available {it was like looking for the tiniest needle in a vast haystack back in 1988...}, but it also seems that there is nowadays a need to over-amplify the difference between men and women, to be either this or that... if you're a woman, you can only look like a woman, behave like one, dress like one... as a woman you MUST be proud of being one... if not, you're treated with suspicion...
the other day i filled in the form needed to get a store card app, and one of the boxes to tick was 'Mr' or 'Mrs'. i wanted to skip that, not feeling either was appropriate, but it wouldn't let me go through. i had to tick either, and i felt very affronted... what the fuck...?! how medieval was this place?! i ticked 'Mrs' and vowed to send them a stinking email {must still do that...}, stating that not everyone in these times wants to tick any box... i'll probably get a polite email back saying they never realised this and a voucher for a cake they're famed for... if they take it seriously at all...
and to make matters totally annoying, i don't always feel this way!! there are days that i feel very girly, and i dress in cute stuff, and i'll watch cute stuff on tv and buy flowers {although the cats have put a stop to that with their leaf-munching antics...} and flirt... maybe it's the hormones, or my lovely daughter's catchy girly-ness, or being in my son's girlfriend's company {although i mostly feel like a clonking hippo when i'm in the company of the latter, who's femininity personified...}, i have no idea. but it catches me by surprise...
last week, while in the middle of one of my id-crises, i watched Maurice - my to-go-to film when i need Romance my-style - and figured that the main character is indeed who i identify with {reminding me spookily of my father too...}, and the Clive-figure is my insecure explorations into my own sexuality, careful and all-knowing, distant and repressed {finding that in my ex}, and Alec is the Love i'm really looking for... the 'now we shall never be parted' bit at the end leaving me in floods of tears each time... wouldn't that be awesome, to find someone who loves you like that...? because of who you are....? wow... "Did you ever dream you could have a friend, someone to last your whole life?" {leaving out the fact that back in those times, they didn't have a cat in hell's chance to Live Happily Ever After, of course...} || {{beautiful essay-like exploration of the film/novel and it's importance in many ways can be read here}}
does it really matter...? what with all the exposure of so many as androgynous, and the sexualisation of just about everything? am i just making a meal of something that's not really that much of an issue anymore...?
it is for me...
and i don't look for a sexualisation of what i feel... sex doesn't really come into it for myself...
it's a need to be able to understand who i am, and to hopefully find a partner one day who can do an Alec, and LOVE me, cos i am who i am...
so yeah... boys and girls...
may be know them...
may we raise them...
may we one day understand what the hell it's all about...?!!
No comments:
Post a Comment