Random rant...

Ok, where to start this one?  Firstly, yesterday was ‘International Women’s Day’.  Really, it was!  Guess you guys did not notice huh?  Yeah, well neither did I.  I saw it on the news last night as part of a report on how women still have to fight to obtain equal rights in the work place.

The thing is, I was listening to Alanis’s “Sister Blister” this morning, and some of the lyrics rang so true to me.  Listen to this: “You and me feel joined only by gender.  We are not all for one and one for all”, and “Such a pity to disavow each other with how far we’ve come.  With how strong we’ve been”.  This whole fight for equality, to be treated fairly and to be respected has been playing on my mind a lot.  As has the fact that others, even strangers, have the powerful ability to either positively or negatively affect how you feel about yourself – whether it be deliberate or not.   For example, you’re having a good day.  You absolutely OWN IT today.  You feel good about yourself, you feel pretty, maybe even sexy and you are walking with a proud strut thinking – Man I am all over IT today!  Then, you walk past someone who looks at you ‘funny’, and IT just disappears!  Suddenly, due to one obscure look from a passing stranger, you begin to feel insecure.  Or, someone close to you unintentionally says something that immediately pushes you off the pedestal you have placed yourself on.  The stranger with the obscure look was probably having a bad day and you landed in his line of sight.  Irrelevant, it still affects you.  Then, there is the other end of the scale.  You get up in the morning and no amount of make up or hair styling can make you feel good.  Basically, you feel like the dog next door is more attractive than you – you simply do not own IT today.  Then a casual acquaintance, someone you have occasionally said hello to in passing, will comment on how pretty they think you look this morning.  Then, all of a sudden, IT is back.  And that’s ok because you are allowed to feel good about yourself!

I was reading my niece S’s blog yesterday where she was talking about how some people have the ability to simply ignore a problem.  Specifically, a problem caused by a disagreement or misunderstanding.  Another example of how others can affect your happiness – or even ability to sleep at night.  I spoke to my niece a bit about it yesterday, and have spoken extensively about it in the past with my sister A.  We do not have this ‘ignore it’ ability.  We cannot sleep peacefully knowing there are unresolved problems hanging around!  Personally, I’ll lie in bed at night and it will play through my mind, and I will get angry, then sad, then angry.  We all wish we had this ‘switch it off’ mechanism in our minds that would allow us to just forget it and move on.  Unfortunately, we don’t.  Mostly I have found that it fades over time.  You still feel the occasional pang when you are lying in bed at night and your thoughts stray back to the problem, but you learn to get your mind to think of other things.  Like how that relative stranger called you pretty today, how you had a great time at the beach last weekend, how funny the last episode of Castle was..   You know, the coping mechanisms. 

Wow, reading back I can see that my mind is simply all over the place today.  I am still debating whether or not to post this…

At the end of the day though, I think I will TRY and follow my father’s advice: Fuck ‘em!  So, to my sisters, my nieces, my daughter, my mom (the beautiful women in my life) – we OWN IT!!  (and, if you figure out what IT is, please let me know!)

D