When you grow up
you'll be big enough to know what I've done
and see I taught you to be a grown
for you when you're grown up.
And when you grow up
You'll be smart enough to understand
all the reasons of those nasty things
I ask of you before you've grown up.
And when you grow up
you'll be allowed to make mistakes
but be responsible and work
and go to bed late every night.
And you will wake up
when the sun comes up and
hopefully with a family in house
go to work until your eyes go square.
And you won't complain because you are a grown up!
When you grow up!
When you grow up, When you grow up!
You will be strong enough to carry all
the heavy things the world throws at you
as it does when you're a grown-up!
And when you grow up, when you grow up!
You'll be brave enough to fight the batles
that you have to fight, with our support,
each night to be a grown-up!
Based on the lyrics of "When I grow up" from Matilda the Musical
I have been living in this beautiful country for over 7 years now.
Not wanting to sound ungrateful, the moment I decided to "immigrant".... well... it is yet to come.
However, I don't see myself returning for at least the next 5 years.
The truth is that the people here remind me a lot of the people in my home country. I enjoy the neighborhood, the social system, the infrastructures... Most of all I love my job, and although I don't dislike my work easily I can't imagine myself enjoying anything this much in my own country. It is not the ridiculous amount of money I earn, or the privileges you receive, or the acceptance I felt, but the fantastic way we are cherished as workers and our private lives are respected within curious boundaries. Literally though, they want to know everything about you, from why you didn't add sauce to your meal to what is within the package you just received. But curiously your family is supposed to come first and no one will ever question that or make you feel any less for that, instead you are encouraged to lead a healthy life in every way.
The sad thing is that I don't believe my home country is ever going to be able to provide me with half the professional and personal nourishing that I receive here. And most of the people that value it are opting the same way as I to find it elsewhere instead of changing our country.
But if life here is so great why do you want to change it?
Because I miss my family. As simple as that, as little as that, as much as that. My family was always very strongly bond and I miss them terribly. The first years you don't mind, you are studying or on your first job and it is not bound to last. But then you find a nice job with a permanent position -another thing which is hard to get on your home country-, and that is still fine because you can visit as often as possible and these days you can call so cheap and even video call.
And all goes well for a number of years.
The thing is I had a baby and everything changed. I had no idea how much this will change everything, but it does! Everyone tells you it will, and you trust that it will, but no amount preparation of can prepare you for how much things change. First, your mother asks why the hell can't you have the child delivered on your home country, as if you could even if you wanted to and why would you want to. A side from the fact that all the family could visit the next day, which I don't know if it would be that fantastic but of course you would love that, the hospital is the one closest to your home which happens to be really good, with the doctors that monitored the whole growth process and that will be able to handle the fact that you might need a longer stay. Of course to your mother this means that you won't be getting the best doctors (the ones she knows), with the best facilities (the ones she knows), and the best care (her care).
On the other hand, she will fly to be the first to meat her grandson or daughter and you will feel so bad that your mother in law can't do the same. Or worst, the reverse happens.
You then find out that your boss is so great he actually gets emotionally happy for you since the day you tell him the good news. Your colleagues come to visit on your payed motherhood leave and show all sorts of tokens of their appreciation for you becoming more and more your friends. Your best friend can't make it because you couldn't get her a more precise date, your sister and father can't come because they has a very demanding project at the moment. But they all will visit soon and as soon as you can you will fly your little marvel to your home country to meat everyone.
So far so good, I wish all the world's problems were thus...
You might but, your little angle is growing so fast. He doesn't recognize anyone every time you come to visit your country because it has been at least 6 months, he has changed so much but you keep posting pictures and comments and movies to keep everyone updated. The fantastic world of inter-connectivity. But the truth is you feel the pressure to do so because you are robbing your parents of their "grandfatherness", you are robbing your little basket of joy of the great bond to the grandparents that makes every childhood magical and breaks the routine of the naysayers the parents must be. He doesn't know the grandparents, the uncles and aunts but most importantly at this rate he never will, not in a real way not in a way that matters and makes him/her part of a larger family.
So what do you do? You make more pictures and this time for your priceless little diaper holder, so you can put a face to a name and maybe later a story to the face that now has name. You remember your mother asking you how it is possible that you don't remember that person you were so fond of when you were 3 and recognize that it is a terrible probably lost cause.
The thing is it is not only your family that doesn't bond with your newest addition. It is you that leave that precious world of yours, every time you say goodbye to fly back to your dream job, pretending that will stay on hold only to be remembered every time you come back that much has changed, they all changed, evolved and developed and you couldn't notice... you couldn't tell... and soon you don't know them that well anymore. Family is family and we all make the biggest effort possible to compensate this by having great quality time every time we are together, we try to be there every time it matters, but can we? will we? will we know to be? would we know how to?
We earn a hope to the future when we chose a place where we believe we can have a dignified life, where we are accepted and respected as professionals and as people and this is in the best case of being accepted. But what we leave behind, can we ever have it back? Can we keep up just by frequently flying and voip calling? Are we aware of the price we are paying, will it be too late when we become aware? Would we do it again for a new offspring because in our home country jobs are scarce and bosses do not look fondly on workers with kids or personal responsibilities? Can we change our country from a distance?
Maybe mine was too much of a romantic notion of marriage.
Only half succeed, and "succeeding" is usually a very low bar to meet: not walking away and not killing one's partner.
I always thought that when I got married it would be forever, that we would share everything and be eachother's company until the end. As such it doesn't seem such an odd or impossible dream to fulfill. The problem is, that each marriage is uinque to the cuple, I would go even further as to say that the definition of one's marriage is unique to one's self. One can only hope to find a companion that is consistent enough with one's notion to give it a fair chance to make "it" work.
I had a romantic notion that a prince galantly held his beloved tight, held her gaze so deep she would weep were it not for the freezing of time and her whole body that was lifted by that moment to a magical dimension. He would declare his eternal love and demonstrate the infinity of his feeling with a kiss that would burst her time bubble, show a thousand starts through her closed lids, light her head to eter and draw her week in the knees. He would then grab her hand tight between his and his chest, while another hand held the back of her neck to once more focus his bright shinning eyes in the deepness of hers and he would ask her if she would be willing to proclame their devotion to one another in the presence of all that they deemed dear.
Instead, as I grew I realised words, gestures and romantic moments mean very little and one's proclamation is just as strong as their weakest word. I would be contempt with a mutual decision to partner with a man that would find me the most important woman in his life, alonside his mother and maybe future doughters, and would invest alongside me in a common future.
I thought for long, proud of my achievments, to have found such a pragmatic love. We considered life together and approached it in a similar way, allowing us to understand eachother in a deeper way than any glance of loving prince. But the truth is that marriage is very little to do with the proclamation of love, and much more to do with the dayly efford to coexist constructively with someone one cares deeply of, so deeply infact that one is open to irreparable damage if the other so decides.
I still believe love conqueres all..., if both are invested in it.
I still believe love to be the sorce of all meaningfull happyness..., and despair.
I still beleive all you need is love..., and a good deal of sleep, food, water, and warmth.
Above all I beleive that love survives everything and above all allows you to survive everything..., if, and only if, you nurture it.
I beleive love to be an entity of its own, as a person is defined by its hardest decisions, love is defined by its consequence in the toughest moments. Whenever faced with difficulties the couple can react by individualizing their response and weakening their bond or by coordenating their response and strengthning their bond. But it is not always easy to cooperate, for that both need to beare a huge amount of care for the other, humbly allow to be volnerable to the other and trust the other with full honesty of their weakness and flaud.
All my life I have wished to create such genuine connections, building no walls and shanring my chest, and this was always meat with distance and uninterest. I never thought it would be so with my marriage, while I am the one on a low all is shared building fundations for a brighter tomorrow, whenever however he is the one feeling vulnerable I am once again meat with distrust and distance. I fear this shows that the asymmetry in my relations to most individuals is a fault of my own, though I fail to understand the cause or how to prevent. Fortunatly enough, I latly made a friend that seems to get the same trouble from the world, always eagered to help, he is neglected as a friend and sometimes kept at a distance to the loss of their own. He is the reason I believe that maybe, it is no fault of my own, but that the world is not ready to hear my heart bit without a shield. I find too often that our barriers protect us not from the harm of life's harshness but from true friendship.
I always thought I would conqueror my prince's inner grounds, but everytime life shows its cutting winds he raises new walls with me on the outside and I am left wondering who is left inside, if it could still be the prince I married, the one I let foster the eternal flame in my chest for.
There are plenty of attempts to translate this beautifully simple song into English, but it is absolutely impossible to convey all the spirit in it... which means that I really must try. :-)
Here goes:
"
If ever anyone, asks about me...
Tell'em that I lived to love you.
Before you, I have merely existed
tired and without anything to give.
My dear, listen to my prayers
I ask that you return, that you again want me
I know one can't love on one's little own
Maybe, very slowly, you can again learn to
My dear, listen to my prayers
I ask that you return, that you again want me
I know one can't love on one's little own
Maybe, very slowly, you can again learn to
If your heart won't want to give in
Won't feel the passion, won't want to suffer
Without making plans for what's to come
My heart could love for the both
"
Amar pelos dois - Salvador Sobral, Eurovision 2017
This might come to a shock to many, but I am a woman.
I was fortunate enough to never feel like that meant much, though I never felt any different or question my gender. I just never believed that being a woman entailed more than being a person that holds the potential to eventually bare children.
Although nowadays I fear the concept of tomboy or tomgirl might offend many, due to the lack of a simpler way to express what I mean to say, allow me to use these terms as their definitions allow. Not going into the detail of who does the considering
or what typical means, for argument sake admit that there is an
underlying and statistically endorsed general consideration that, associated to ones
culture, attributes characteristics to define the "typical girl" and the "typical boy" and that tomboy is thus a girl that exhibits characteristics or behaviors considered typical of a boy. Full disclosure: I was graced with a tomboy spirit and never felt the pressure to be any different, probably because my mother was already a great athletic tomboy and my father.. Well, he married my mother, so I guess of all the ladies he could have tried to pick he rushed to close the deal with the lady that made him warmer and cozier inside and that was a tomboy girl. My mother sisters and cousins were all female and all were clear tomboys. This means that in my family tomboy behavior was actually valued. Independently of our gender we all came out with a high athletic prowess, incredible sensitivity for words and arts in general and good abstraction and logical thinking. I always took my upbringing for granted, considering that I was born to a family in sufficient financial well-being that nothing ever missed on the table or school ground, but looking back I realize that I was blessed so much more than that. My great-aunt was a woman that studied while caring for her younger sisters because her mother was ill and ended up with a maths degree giving high-school classes, divorced from a cheating husband and absolutely selfsuficient. That is a woman that blew over 95 candles and still has a wit to shame me. Most of the women in my family ended up in science. My grandmother was never that good with maths, she was a stay-home woman that took care of the household until she embodied the emancipation. She studied after her children were razed with little opposition from her husband that missed the "real cooking" but knew better than to try and stop her. By the time she was able to retire she took a master in "woman condition"she wasn't a brilliant study, but she had a shy strength that sounded like "why not me too?". This way, since very young I learned that there was no underlying reason why being a woman meant more than that you had some reproductive organs that aren't always nice to handle. Nowadays I know mine was a very limited and fortunate view of life.
A phd, a baby and a husband later I can say that looking at statistics and reports I now understand that not all women got the chance to fulfill their true potential, many due to some cultural pressure even within my own culture, other due to unequal funding. It saddens me to know that little girls can't imagine themselves following courses that they get inspired by because they are told that they wouldn't be successful "because it is not a subject/job for a girl".
Worst than that, I fear that this is only perpetuated by the confused and mishandled media movement that assaults the concept of gender equality. There is no such thing as gender equality, by definition genders are different, that is why we came up with the genders, to mention the difference between humans in two kinds.
There should nevertheless be gender equity! I am all for it, but how do we get it? Assuming that what we need is to force science down little girls throats or that little boys should be forced to play with dolls is absurd and treating equally inherently different individuals equally will only result in more differentiation.
Studies show the impact of hormones on our career choices, career according to hormones. There is also no doubt that hormones control our brain functions: "Verbal memory scores are frequently used as one measure of higher level cognition. These scores vary in direct proportion to estrogen levels throughout the menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and menopause" -Estrogen wikipedia; "There are some differences between a male and female brain (possibly the
result of different testosterone levels), one of them being size: the
male human brain is, on average, larger. ... Attention, memory, and spatial ability are key cognitive functions affected by testosterone in humans." -Testosterone wikipedia. Now as all men like to point out, size is not always a good measure. And for a great investigative journalism on the subject watch: The gender equality pradox - documentary NRK - 2011
where you can easily get the idea that the social movement is guiding and creating biased on the undeniable truth, men and women are on average different.
Women can have their brains wired differently because biologically they were selected to perform different tasks, does that makes them dumber? Well, maybe? Now, before you rage out of this blog understand that language was developed in this patriarchy that has since been progressing into what we now know as modern society. Although we attacked the concept that only males can be clever, wasn't the measure of cleverness devised based in men abilities, by men and to measure men for men jobs? Couldn't it be that this new emotional coefficient helps complement the previous idea that cleverness was limited to the intelligence coefficient?
It all boils down to statistics, the numbers that don't lie, the data, the science, the undeniably reliable source of probing reality. Does anyone doubt that although you can define very accurately the average woman there probably isn't such a being? Statistics my friends was developed to use in bulk, to predict, and see traces in the many, but fails miserably to define or predict the singular. Are you sure that given any woman she will be more likely to be alike her sister than her brother? Can you not think of cases where that isn't true? Then fighting any statistics that prove men to be different from women, which is to be rationally expected since we are biologically different, is not only illogical but a perversion of science. Then why are we so concerned about the amount of women in science or engineering? -women scientific researchwomen in science
Shouldn't we rather be concerned about the fact that socially we have created a higher relevance to all men-prone jobs and discredit the importance of women-prone jobs. Why is the kindergarten teacher, that possibly has more influence in designing our future societies, less relevant in our culture than the engineer that helps design the landscape? Why are nurses considered less important, when they have such an impact on patient recovery, than the doctor, that might be replaced by an artificial intelligence with access to an inhuman size database (comment). Why did career women look down on stay home mothers or women that hanged their career for few years to attend closer to their children? Why do we make it sound like only maths and science is a smart subject, when psychologists that aren't extremely smart aren't only useless but harmful?
Maybe, this "woman's day", instead of praising the women that less look "like women" to you, praise the diversity that makes each woman and man unique. Instead of parsing equality that is imposed forcefully and unnaturally on society, praise equity that allows minorities to feel welcomed and secure where they are valuable for their diversity contribution. Praise mothers for being mothers and fathers for being fathers, teachers for teaching, nurses for nursing, lawyers for defending and accusing, doctors for researching and devoting, and society for learning to adapt to the human concept that has evolved so much since my great-aunt's time. Embrace a new era in which we no longer need to fight tradition for the sake of breaking momentum. Instead of steering boys and girls to behave accordingly because it is tradition, or to behave the same because it is the new fashion, one can nurture their curiosity to explore what they like and allow people to fall in love by professions that fit them best, whether that means equal statistics or not, whether that means being a minority and learning about your own uniqueness.
From a place of absolute freedom, because I know that I was free to be as pink as I'd like -I did have that phase- and I was free to dream of becoming a painter, then a dance, then a physicist and then an engineer and finally managed to follow through on the last two:
"I have a dream, that one day every person will feel free to explore and define his/hers own self and thus contribute more efficiently to society."
I am sure of only one thing, that everyone experiences feelings and in particular pain for different reasons in their own peculiar ways. I won't try to pretend to know what happens inside others bodies or what crosses their minds. I can only explore my own pain and hope that understanding it will shed light to people feeling it themselves or to those closest to them.
I want to start by making it very clear that I love my life, I have been too lucky too often and would not switch with anyone else's and yet I considered only too often to part from it.
In my understanding there are two types of people, those that are consistent that they exist and therefore deserve a shot at being happy and those that are constantly wondering if they deserve all they have been given be that what may. I would never correlate this distinction to their altruistic or good nature nor their common sense.
The first won't often wonder whether they should be alive. They don't understand that need, they are alive and nothing you can say could make such a question less nonsensical. They expect that life is to be cherished and lived to the fullest of their abilities. Their most common question seems to be what can I do to improve life, mine and that of those around me. Their understanding of the question "should I be alive?" is reserved for extreme cases of pain, when life has nothing to offer and nothing to live for.
The latter, as you may well expect by now, will constantly consider "should I be alive?" in other words whether they are consuming resources that would be better spent on someone else. This is a strange concept I know, for the first type of people, but the question sums up to whether another would have taken better choices and be a better son/daughter or husband/wife or father/son. Mostly the question ends up in "would the world be a better place without me in it"?
I started wondering if my family would be better of without me when I was 5, first time I decided to run away from home. I don't remember it well. I do remember very well though by the age of 10 when I decided again to leave home. At that time I didn't have much common sense, if I ever got any, I just ran. I was enraged, I was panting and frustrated and I couldn't even understand what was coming over me. I was violent and afraid, my thoughts were all over the place and I couldn't seem to calm down. The view helped. I had this place close to the drive way, a large open field that I used to use to run with my dog every morning. My dog had died and I hadn't been there for what felt like to long. I guess it made sense that my feet took me there although I couldn't remember deciding it or anything else that leaving for that matter. It was cold, but not too much and it wasn't raining nor was the floor wet, there were no large piles of leaves from the trees that spread erratically through the field, which means that it was probably spring time. I had had a major fight with my mother who I loved, and I felt awful. I found a place close to the moving cars that was shielded by a large enough bush that I could sit behind. The sound of the cars helped. The coverage of the bush too. I couldn't cry, until I could and then I cried like I had just murdered someone. I revisited what happened, which was so meaningful I couldn't tell you today, 20 years later. I know I didn't fell like I had to change, or improve, I felt like it was something about who I was and how I was incapable of hurting someone even as close as my mother or sister, even with as much love as I had for them. I felt selfish so it all probably started with me not willing to borrow something to my sister, my father stepping in to force the good sisterhood in me and me reacting in plain fury. Time passed and I ran through my problem, I broke it down to myself. Then I focused on options, but I could find none. I was not autonomous and had no money, there was no place I could get a job at that age, and I was not prepared to go hungry and die. I considered crossing the street, and getting hit by a car, they were passing so fast, so close, and they wouldn't have time to see me since it was night and I was just jumping from behind a bush that covered me well. I thought that I could kill someone, and that is no way to end my life. I would at least break some innocent person's car and leave them thinking they were responsible for my decease which was unfair. I considered going to my grandparents house, they would love to heroically take me in and save me from my parents, but my parents weren't bad parents and they didn't deserve that sort of pain. The whole idea was to spear them more hurt and they had enough bad blood with my grandparents without me pulling this one on them. So I went back home. My mother pretended not to be too worried or mad, and just tried to calmly say that it was not alright for me to run off like that and I too pretended it was no big deal. That is the first time I remember thinking of shutting my eyes completely for good. Since then, many times over I considered it. Not because my life was unbearable but because my pain was. Over the years I came to recognize this anxiety that takes over you and the despair afterwards, the feeling worthless and a guilt thereafter. I don't control my temper too often and many times my feelings of guilt are related. Sometimes I notice that the immense pain comes first it takes a hold of my heart and doesn't seem to let go. My patience is then reduced and I am bound to pick up a fight and feel worthless again and feel this all too familiar feeling that it could all end, the pain, the strain of trying to be better at every turn, the despair of not being a better person, the guilt of hurting those I love. Last time I felt it I cryied myself to sleep next to my beloved husband and I had no reason what so ever, not a real one. I could feel my brain searching for a reason to make sense of it, something to fill guilty for, something to explain this angst. I had years before noticed that all these episodes do happen within a certain cycle of the month and that I was brought down to this abyss of internal pain by biology. Not the hormones alone. The same way it is not reasonable to question the sanity of a woman that screams for something she asked you thousands of times not to do, just because she has her period. Biology just gets you in a lower starting point, on a higher nerve frenzy and closer to pop. I know the pain can feel so real that even having noticed the biology contribution and rationally sensing my brain fighting to make sense I went through my options. Pills, jumping, scenarios... having many options and none immediate helped. Mostly I felt like anyone else could become a better wife, and that my family would be better of without the disappointment and heart break I bring. I can honestly say I felt this, and I can honestly say that rationally there is no reason for me to be such a logical disappointment to anyone. Some people just have this internal dialog on pause in their head, it is destructive, it is impulsive and it sneaks up on you at any time you go a bit lower. These latter people gain a lot having someone or something depending on them, they want to be part of something bigger that relies on them and justify the oxygen they steal from unborn innocent futures full of potential. I haven't had such a feeling since my son was born, and I am certain it is because he needs me so that it can't cross my mind not being here for him. I wonder what I'll have when he reaches 21 and my husband is naturally exhausted of loving me to his fullest and with all my crazy.
I am sorry if I scared anyone reading, and hope this story helps someone needing answers that the self can't sometimes find. I felt many times that it is usually because it is intrinsic to us, our way of thinking and our biology that we can't make sense of it. It is so incrusted in who we are that we can't probe and have a hard time externalize. I believe also that trying to externalize this phantom pain and hollowness that leads some people to hurt themselves.
I wonder what makes me boil so quickly,
I want to believe it is love hence vulnerability,
I would like to think the screams are on you
that admit to poke for a stronger reaction.
I am not sure though if you are right,
that it is way too easy for me to complain,
that I get way too upset way too fast,
that the triggers are multiple and irrelevant.
Maybe I do burn inside with uncontrollable rage,
and you are the closest on my face
or the one trying to get under my skin.
Regardless, wish I could be the bigger man,
that I could listen to sharp knifes and keep my calm,
that I could hold my ground when it is so far gone.
