A Want of a Fantasy

 A want of a fantasy, a fantasy life. A fantasy born of the Patriarchy, lies built up on lies and story and manipulations meant to control, harness and keep a woman from knowing her true worth. It is this perspective that shows how much I have grown and healed. The once deeply internalized ideals of patriarchal power and dominance have been shedding like an old skin these past 15 years.

I see now the horrific truth, and the lies behind the "cultural stories" and expectations of society foisted and ingrained into our malleable minds as we are young. its all Disney style princesses, adventures of buried treasure and romanticized reality for girls. I cannot say what all it is for boys, but I have seen performative and toxic masculinity pushed as a standard in the most damaging of ways, and many women are more invested in this kind of belief system than the old white men it mostly benefits.

I never wanted to be thought of as an activist, radical, an "angry feminist". I am certainly not a man hater. I love men. Not all men but those who can see from a feminist perspective. Because the archaic, patriarchal mantle that shrouds most people's sense through the long reaching arms of our governing bodies and religious cults is bad for most men too. And as a mother, and a former "Hopeless Romantic," that blindness has been ripped from my eyes one too many times. 

I don't think I believe in love anymore. Not romantic love. I want too. It's a lovely dream, but I believed to strongly. I realized the other day that I have not known one man in all my life that did not let me down. They walked away after promising to stay, they left me vulnerable to predators when they were duty bound to protect me, or they themselves were the predators in one fashion or another. All because I believed so hard in the beautiful lie. the narrative of the happily ever after fantasy. in spite of all evidence and observed phenomenon to the contrary. Despite every experience I have ever had. I believed for almost 45 years. I wanted to anyhow.

When I began to understand it wasn't real, it would never be real. That romance is another lie like religion or gender roles, I didn't want to see it. I dug in my heels and kept trying to be "good enough" to win the prize. But I didn't win anything like what I was told to expect, what I was taught to believe in. I won the grief that comes from being a willing mark, the embarrassment of having no shame, the horror of subjecting my child to people who did not have the care for her that might contribute to her well-being and best interests. I became the stupid and insipid mother repeating a cycle of subjecting her children to abusers while seeming not to know, not wanting to know. Wishing I had known or had seen with my eyes open.

Going forward from here, children grown and gone, my best health and looks behind me, used up on relationships with men that are also long gone, I feel empty, cracked, hardened, and so filled with grief for my mothers and foremothers. I do not know what I am suppssed to look forward to now in my life. Those still brainwashed might say grandchildren. But I do not push that onto my kid. She can live her life as she wants to, knives out and blinders off.  No deeply dysfunctional obligations to try and give MY life meaning. That is my ownwork, my own journey, my own connection to the Divine or lack there of. 

But oh! That old, insidious fantasy has so many neural links calling me back to it. Despite the wounds and battle scars. despite the lies and the disappointments. True Love calls like the elusive butterfly, but has anyone Really seen it? or did they only HOPE to catch it.