Our world is not perfect. There is injustice, inequality, and cruelty. But it is still a lot better than earlier worlds before, more equal than before.
I was recently in a situation in which I felt like I was constantly being steam rolled, ignored, and pushed around. It felt like my voice didn’t matter and because of this, my identity didn’t matter (because I associated myself largely with my voice). It felt like I was being flattened against the wall, disappearing, becoming more of the background. And it felt pretty horrible.
And I thought, thank God I do not have to do this everyday. Thank goodness I do not have to have my voice silence, my words ignored, everyday (to which in some situations I do, but for the majority of my life, I don’t). Because I could feel how if I was born in another time, how stifling, constricting, and suffocating it would be.
It would drive me crazy, drive me up the walls, and I thought, Okay, I understand The Yellow Wallpaper more now (a short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman). I really like that story, it has always made an impression on me. But I could imagine how all these circumstances would make me mute, crazy, and isolated.
At the end of it, I just wanted to get out, to be alone, to be anywhere else. It felt like someone had swaddled me in blankets, and stuck me in the tropics next to a heater. The kind of heat that makes you crazy, that makes you feel like your brain is melting out your ears.
And I thought how horrible it was for women before me, to watch injustice, to feel injustice, and have little ways to escape, no light at the end of the tunnel, just a long haul.
I am happy to be home.