Sunday Morning

“I am not a Sunday morning inside four walls
with clean blood
and organized drawers.
I am the hurricane setting fire to the forests
at night when no one else is alive
or awake
however, you choose to see it
and I live in my own flames
sometimes burning too bright and too wild
to make things last
or handle
myself or anyone else
and so I run.
run run run
far and wide
until my bones ache and lungs split
and it feels good.
Hear that, people? It feels good
because I am the slave and ruler of my own body
and I wish to do with it exactly as I please”

― Charlotte Eriksson

Invisible League

Like Alice plunging down the rabbit hole, I was suddenly not the fun girl at the party but the dotty auntie figure we humor for a moment before moving on. As older women we are no longer desirable, no longer perceived as anything but taking up space a younger person could put to better use in the job, in the relationship, in life. Age, I now realize, doesn’t creep up, it fells you with changes you didn’t see coming. And it happens at 50. You vanish, replaced by an old and forgettable woman.

This is an excerpt from an article written by Tracy Nesdoly for The Star (see the full article here) about At what age do some women begin to feel invisible? I came across this while looking for random things about age on the internet. One click and I was suddenly bombarded with page after page of written stories about women of a certain age who are invisible and no longer seen as important part of society. The titles are demeaning. Not only for us middle age women but for any woman young or old because whether we like it or not we will be in that position sooner or later. What do you think of: Dating: I’m the Invisible woman,  where the writer calling herself a mere plankton in the food chain of sexuality and the marketplace for relationships. A flimflam, a nuisance, an embarrassment of landfill. It hurts, doesn’t it?

In this post, ‘Invisible’ middle-aged women are fighting back English writer Helen Walmsley-Johnson talks about menopause, sexual, currency, dressing up for your age and hormones replacement. She recounted her personal experience with a group of young boys while walking through the park one day.

They made fun of her brisk walk, then began to crudely share their views on which of a group of passing schoolgirls they wanted to have sex with, clearly intending for her to hear. Tired of listening, Walmsley-Johnson asked them to move on — and to consider keeping their sexist remarks to themselves. They reacted with hissing, noxious anger, calling her a “dried up old c***” and suggesting that if a “real woman” were to talk to them about sexism, they might listen.

I have yet to experience this sort of things. Do I have to consider myself lucky?

I have always been younger looking than my real age (thanks to my ethnicity and good genes- the only good I inherited from my ancestors) not only by few years but by more than a decade, let’s say at least fifteen. When I’ve met my current husband I was thirty-seven but he thought I was twenty-two and so were his family and friends. When I was twenty-five they don’t allow me in the discos because the guards thought my ID was fake. I was once banned from accompanying my daughter to sexual orientation class because they thought I was her sister and only parents were allowed. And so the years go on like that, me being used to getting attention (lots of it actually) I don’t care for and wishing I’m invisible.

No, I don’t wear sexy or provocative clothes, figure-hugging attires will not find a home in my closet, I don’t wear makeup, high heels and go to the hair salon only once a year. In short, I am a low maintenance girl. Attracting attention to myself (any kind of attention) was and will never be my purpose in life and it irritates me enormously getting more than I think I deserved. And I thought it will go on like that till the end. Never cross in my naive brain that it will change someday.

The first sign happened when I turned forty- three. I was in the pharmacy and the guy behind the counter referred to me as ‘Madame’ instead of ‘Mademoiselle.’  I was taken aback. Shocked in fact. It hurts. I was always been ‘Mademoiselle’ instead of ‘Madame’ and suddenly it’s the other way around. I thought then that ‘now the process had begun.’

When almost a decade had passed with nothing or little changes to my status as a desirable woman I again thought it will never happen, until this year.

I am still looking at least fifteen years younger than my real age but I’m fifty-one, and forty isn’t twenty. And gradually I noticed subtle changes. The guys who are looking at me now are not the sixteen years old anymore. The twenty-something still glance my way but soon averted their eyes when they realized in which age category I truly belonged. Their gaze never lingers anymore or check more than once, they bestow me an interested glance which quickly fades and then move on without looking back. I can walk now into a restaurant without commanding attention. There was a time that wherever I walk men (women too but with hostility) stop whatever they were doing and look, and keep looking till I was out of sight. I have out of this world experience related to my sensuality and it’s strong effect on men you wouldn’t believe if I tell so I would spare you the details. I was by no means a ‘beauty’ or ‘femme fatale,’ the truth is I never know why I had this such effect on men, my ex once described me as magic but whatever it is, it is soon disappearing.

And with it comes the realization that I don’t want to be invisible. Not only as a woman but as a human being. I’m getting old yes, I’m losing my magic, probably so, but I still have feelings. Feelings never change. Who wants to be irrelevant?

Deborra-Lee-Furness, in her interview with Australian Women’s Weekly magazine, talked about jaw-droppingly insulting titles of stories written about her (and others who are in the same situation) being married to uber hunk Mr. Hugh Jackman who happened to be thirteen years her junior. She said: “People think a 58-year-old woman doesn’t deserve a big-shot, funny, handsome, movie star husband at all. It’s still acceptable for there to be a million internet articles about being a supposedly unattractive middle-aged man and be able to “punch above your weight” and bag yourself a younger, stunning partner.”

What could I say? I am married to someone 11 years my junior. Do I have to be scared? He’s getting old too I know but everyone is aware that getting old is not the same for men and women. I don’t have to list the differences because it is a common knowledge. Damn the double standard.

Marina Benjamin, author of The Middlepause found an essay from a 1903 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine in which a woman of 50′ used to be perceived as a person of achievement and grace and was “characterized as having ‘distinctive charm and beauty, ripe views, disciplined intellect, and cultivated manifold gifts’.” That is so clearly not the case nowadays, and for the woman approaching this milestone age, there is a good reason to feel anxious, or sad, or pissed off. She said:

“Fifty feels tarnished as an old coin, and worn — worn down and worn out,” she says. “There is nothing glamorous about 50 that I can see, not even in some retro way.” 

How about you? Do you have Invisible Woman Syndrome?

Reflection

Where have the years gone? Sometimes I have to stop and think about how old I am. When I wake up in the morning, before I move this tired old body or look in the blasted mirror, I swear I’m still a young woman. It just feels like yesterday. I don’t know how it’s gone so fast.

-Lea Davey, Silkworm Secrets

I’m back!

Amidst tons of laundry, some unpacking still to do, shopping for food and immense work in the garden, I managed to squeeze a couple of minutes to write this post to let you know I made it back in one piece. In between times, I learned that WordPress has canceled the existence of The Daily Post (there goes photo challenge and of course the Daily Prompts) what a pity. I will sure miss it and I am sure you will too. I will be back writing the usuals in a couple of days but for the meantime, I have some tidying up to do. Glad to see you again guys. Thank you for keeping my space alive during my absence, I enjoyed my time away but__ as always

It’s good to be back. 🙂 

Gratitude

Have you ever thanked all 206 members of your skeletal system for holding you up? You should, because no matter how difficult things might yet become, they won’t openly betray you.

Sometimes they only forget that they are holding human flesh within their homes, it’s why you fall.

But you rise again don’t you?

Have you thanked both your lungs for loving you all your life? You should for every single moment. Because they love you so much; so much so that they refuse to give up on you even on days when all you want is to cease from breathing altogether.

Have you kissed all of your ten fingers yesterday and today, both? You should, because they will say and keep on saying the things your mouth would never be brave enough to say.

Have you thanked the other members of your internal organs for this moment yet? You should, because thanks to them, you are ALIVE.

Talk to your body when no one wishes to address you, your body listens and it does love you.

Aside from your body, you should thank God above all else too —because if it weren’t for Him, you wouldn’t have a body.

You wouldn’t have a body left to thank and to love and live in.

— Faceless word that I am

“Gratitude” by CJessica Chua

Stories

The story of how one t-shirt makes me feel

All I have left of you is one t-shirt.
I deleted all your texts and erased you from social media. I even threw away an odd sock I found of yours, black with an orange toe and heel.

This one t-shirt that I can barely bring myself to look at, let alone wear, crops up in my washing every now and again. It is so foreign to me, so infinitesimally you that I cannot wear it and feel at home. I do not recognize it. Maybe that is because I never felt at home with you. Never felt comfortable in my own skin. Always brittle, on edge, ready to snap and break in your presence. To shut down and shut you out.

This one t-shirt is all I have left to remind me of you. When I close my eyes and try to conjure your image up I cannot. I can only see small details. Your red curls, your ice blue eyes, the freckle on the pinkie of your left hand – the one I only noticed the day we walked away from each other. I remember the gap in your teeth, that funny tight smile and the way you used to say my name, hold my hand, stroke my face. But you as a whole/the person I thought I knew? That I cannot see.

This t-shirt is all I have left to remind me of the darkest five months of my life. The hardest, most painful, jagged and scarring thing I have ever endured. Five months of stretching and snapping. Five months of seeing how happy we could have been and five months of being miserable. Five months of wanting to let go and love and not being able to. Five months of pushing you away and wanting to hold you close. This t-shirt is a memento of my failure. Of my loss. Of you.

When I wear this t-shirt and people comment on it – they say ‘that suits you’ or ‘i haven’t seen you in that before’ or why don’t you wear it more often?’ And the words to tell them why I do not wear it catch it my throat. I say – it is not mine.

I can never bring myself to say that it is yours.

― Alice Nicolov

Six Degrees Of Separation

If I were to kill myself tonight I would do it to get into hell
And from that eternal consuming state
I’d wander 3,000 feet below your toes 
And that, to me
Is the apotheosis of everything I couldn’t say
Because you weren’t ready to hear it
Or maybe because I fear rejection
And showing nothing means feeling nothing
I wish I could mutter the words
To bring you back
To have you crawling from under my bed
And finally, realize you were the monster in my head
The idyll in my dreams
The reason I’ve turned into an insomniac sleepwalker
A wrecked lifeless being
Who later took this nothingness and despair
And transformed it into poetry
With which I hoped I could make you mine
And force you to remain in our realm
Built on demons and sleepless nights
And inner peace
To get by.

“Six degrees of separation” by Vlada Bunescu

Pairs

Things of importance,
Are always in twos I presume.

Sadness, joy
And then
Sadness resumes.

Moments shared with you
Are always lived twice.

Once what angered me
I laugh at it and rejoice

And then I remember
The rainy December
We’d laughed till we got
All tired

Now I looked back at that time and cried.
I live my every moment with you
In two alternating shades

Once with you
And then again
As your presence fades.

— “Pairs” by Iqra Aslam 

Today’s Thoughts

Maybe it doesn’t need to be anxiety. Or paranoia. Maybe it doesn’t have to be a result of a difficult childhood or bullied adolescence. Perhaps, it isn’t necessary to meet up with the requirements listed in a fancy Wikipedia article about heavy mental disorders for it to hurt. Each seemingly vague collision with this world’s cruelty can leave you gasping for air, clinging at the stitches. Each lover that abandoned us, each friend who turned their back in a crucial moment … it piles up. Waiting for the timer to count down the seconds. And when it hits, the bones in your body will be screaming to surface, burning in an infinite parallel universe. Immeasurable will be the crushing weight of the piling thoughts, echoing in that sad head of yours. But do not ever, under any condition, permit somebody to restrain your right to feel pain, only because they have suffered far more severe injury. Do not let anybody count your scars and tell you to “get over it”, after comparing their number to yours. It is not a contest. It is not a race on who can get fucked up beyond repair first. Respect others’ misfortunes and approach them in a kind manner. But expect the same in return and do not settle for any less.
If it is human to ache, it should be human to sympathize. Why have we let the course of our civilization reach this point? Why did we permit such constant comparisons? Not only do we now compete for having the best body or hottest outfit, but for who exhausted their hearts first, who gave up the fastest and who can romanticize depression to the fullest. We crossed the boundaries long ago and eloped in a twisted, sick environment. In a place, where scorning is ranked higher than lending a helping hand. Where sorrow is excessively inflicted. So forget them. Turn your back to each hurled remark. Never give a care about how they criticize the way you choose to cope. It depends on you and you alone. Be that hero you dreamed about last night or that inspiring person you overheard in the subway. That’s all it really is, life, I mean – learning how to cope and move on.

#ReaderSubmission by Kiki

What’s That Again?

At the first kiss I felt something melt inside me that hurt in an exquisite way. All my longings, all my dreams and sweet anguish, all the secrets that slept deep within me came awake, everything was transformed and enchanted, everything made sense.

— Hermann Hesse

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

It’s not puberty that hits you. It’s your deliberate choice to cope with society’s standards of beauty. You shed fats, you wore makeup, you fit in. Truth be told, if you aren’t beautiful to them, you’ll surely won’t be treated right.

I discovered lipstick when I was 48 and I started wearing them only two years ago. I don’t care what society wants and expects, I have my own rules. It doesn’t make my life any easier but I don’t go with the flow and life is too short to worry myself about things that don’t concern me really. I’ve been treated unfairly because of the color of my skin and been accused of many things I didn’t do because I refuse to be part of the social herd but what judgmental, simple-minded prejudiced people think say and do tell more about their narrow one-track mindedness and characters than about me. Eat their hearts out for all I care. Shakespeare once said:

My beauty, though but mean,
Needs not the painted flourish of your praise:
Beauty is bought by judgement of the eye,
Not utter’d by base sale of chapmen’s tongues

That means beauty, like supreme dominion
Is but supported by opinion and exists merely in the mind which contemplates them.

TO THE MAN I WILL ALWAYS LOVE

Someone asked me if I am over you, I just smiled. I have always ached every time I realize it’s you, and it will always be you. The idea of me loving someone else is a blur right now.

As much as I wanted to say, “I am over him, I don’t care anymore,” and mean it, I can’t, because I care. Even if you happen to stumble on my way ten or fifteen years from now, I still and always care.

A lot of people misunderstand this concept of moving on and say you won’t care about the past if you’re truly over it. For me, it doesn’t work that way.

Moving on for me is merely accepting what happened, with no regret for what will never be. And for a person who loves too much, I can truthfully say that one can never really get over someone who once meant the world to them. We can just get used to the pain and feeling of missing someone until we make ourselves comfortable in it, and I believe that a tiny spark of hope can always reborn what we thought is already dead– love.

It’s been two years since everything ended but I can still remember the vast happiness I had when I was with you, and I just want to say that I miss you.

I miss those moments when we glance at each other and smile because we both know words are not enough to explain what we feel. Even if every day I am dying to feel these all again, all I could do is sit here, try to be happy for you, and pour out all my feelings by writing about you.

Love, if ever the time comes when you remember me and come back, just know that I am always here, waiting.

However, love, if the time comes when you come back and see me loving someone else, just know that it took me too much courage to open my heart to another guy again after what I’ve been through for you, for us. If you happen to realize that he could have been you, just keep in mind that my heart, no matter how much it endures every pain for you, it gives up.

I know I’ll be in love again. But for now, I’ll continue holding on to what you said, “If we are meant to be, love will lead us back.”

You see, I don’t believe in destiny and such things as “meant-to-bes” for I know that only our own choices influence what happens in our life. But you, you made me believe in dreams and fantasies.
But I guess it’s time to wake up.

I’ll smile for you again because I know that one day, I’ll be seeing you.
Until then, I will be missing you.

I am not asking for you to come back. I see you are very happy now and it somehow eases the feeling of longing for your presence, for your happiness is my delight, even if I am not a part of it.
—
Written by Tin Sarmienta via Berlin ArtParasites

I’m Just Not Cut Out For Love

“She’s a special kind of woman…She’s the one with the ability to be that rock and that foundation. She’s the woman who will sacrifice for your happiness, support your every dream and be your biggest fan. She’s the one that will inspire you, motivate you and challenge you to become a better person in every aspect of your life. She’s the woman who will fight to make things work and never take the easy way out. She’s a special kind of woman. She’s loyal. She’s intelligent. She’s passionate about life. She has a soul. She has substance. She has a heart of gold. And she knows how to love unconditionally. She’s a special kind of woman. And she’s entirely too special to be with anything less than a king.” ~ Unknown

I’m beginning to think that maybe I’m just not cut out for love.

I suppose it isn’t love but rather reciprocal love. Or at the very least, the kind of love that would make someone want to do anything to be with me. The feeling that two people get that inspires them to move mountains to make their love as real as the sunrise.

Maybe my problem is that I just think love is supposed to be magical—not logical. My soul craves electricity, sparks, poetry, and the way the kiss of a soulmate can make the world disappear.

Yet as much as I crave this, as much as I give this love to others, it’s never given back to me. I am never the one who sits across from someone while they hold my hands telling me, “Baby, there isn’t anything in the world that I wouldn’t do to make this work, because you are the one thing I know for certain.”

But I’m tired of lying to myself, and I’m tired of pretending that friendship is the only possibility. And I’m even more tired of believing in love and having faith that one day I won’t be putting myself to bed alone each evening.

I think I’m finally realizing that, just maybe, I’m never going to be loved in the way that I need to be.

Maybe it’s my destiny to be alone, maybe it’s my lot to give but never fully receive.

I suppose it’s my fault in some ways, because I always see the light even in the darkness. I never focus on the reasons why it won’t work, but only the reasons why it would. I don’t look at how difficult it could be, but how worth it it would be. I don’t spend a minute thinking about how a love would affect others, because I know that when you find a love that feels like home, you hang onto it.

I’ve always been a romantic, someone who loves the dramatic climax in movies when all seems lost but then love wins. The kind of woman who wants a man to drive hours just to feel my lips against his, or to get woken up in the middle of the night just because he couldn’t wait until sunrise to see me. Maybe it’s not even love I’m after, but just being so special to someone they would do anything to not only get me, but keep me.

Yet, even with all of this, I refuse to change.

I won’t budge even an inch, because I am unable to accept anything less than the kind of love that spins my world around and lands me in another dimension. A love that kisses me like Sunday morning, and has me on my knees praying in gratitude that our souls were brought together in this lifetime.

I don’t want a regular love. I don’t want others to approve of us simply because we have things in common or because he would be a good addition to my family. I don’t want a man to say “we make sense.”

What I want is the man who tells me I drive him crazy, that I kill him slowly with my love and realness. I want a man who breathes me in and refuses to go through life with anyone else by his side. I want a man to struggle with the idea of me and feel that no matter what he does, he just can’t get me out of his heart.

I guess what I’m really after is a man who will fight for me, for us, in the same ways that I would for him.

Someone who not only tells me I am worth it—but shows me with his actions.

Even with my heart draped in bittersweet love, I still don’t think I am asking for too much. I don’t think that it’s crazy to think that sometimes love does grow in the most unlikely of places and that when that happens, instead of running away, we have to plant our feet firmly and remain determined to protect something so special.

I don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I don’t know if perhaps one day there will be a man who throws caution to the wind just to be the one who wakes up to my starry eyes in the morning.

I don’t know if I will ever be loved in the ways I need to be. Maybe I’m just not cut out for love. Maybe I am meant to walk this life alone, giving out unconditional love as gifts to those I cross paths with. Perhaps it’s only in my loneliness that I am able to love like I do—because when it’s undiluted and pure, it becomes an unstoppable force.

But I don’t really believe that. Because I know I am not wrong for what I feel and what I want. Because I’ve learned that in love, you only get the amazing stuff if you actually believe it exists.

As for me, I’d rather spend my days alone believing in this messy, imperfect, difficult, beautiful vision of love than settling for the bland taste of companionship without passion.

Author: Kate Rose