But I don't feel like it.

I didn't feel like writing a blog post.  I didn't feel like it because my thoughts told me I wouldn't have anything to say, and if I did, it would be too dangerous, would expose too much, would perhaps even destroy life as we know it.

That's a lot of pressure to put on a blog post.  No wonder it feels intimidated.  It also points to the massive ego I must have.  But I'll address that in a later blog post titled "I Hate Myself But I'm Also the Greatest Thing In the World."

I've been playing around with this idea that our thoughts create our emotions.  It's not a new idea.  Any good cognitive behavioral therapist reading this will be like, duh.  And then I'll be like, "Hey.  Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, you talkin' to ME?"

It's funny how we set up these structures for ourselves early on in life that we hold on to like they're true.  For example, my high school years consisted of me thinking that the rational mind was superior.  Never once did I ask, So who decides what's rational?  Not until my Women's Studies classes in college, that is.  Whoo boy.  Mind blown.  I started asking big, angry questions:  Who says?  Who benefits?  Why does it seem like old white men are the only people who seem to be saying this?  Why are there 175 illustrations of paintings done by men and only 3 by women in my Modern Art textbook?  I was going full on Lilith Festival. 

So, I started reading French feminists:  Cixous, and some others I can't remember now.  What I do remember is the idea of L'ecriture feminine.  Women's writing.  Specifically writing from the woman's body.

For so long, women's bodies have been written ON.  Prescribed, defined.  Judged -- like some blank slate that needs form, but only the form acceptable to The Gaze. 

I should say at this point, that my interest now has expanded beyond just women's studies.  Every human alive is written upon, somehow.  But let's just set that aside for now.

Stretch marks.  A room of one's own to record the meandering feelings of the madwoman in the attic.  Who is she?  Why is she so dangerous?  Why do they keep putting her up in the attic?  My answer at that time was that she has big feelings.  Angry feelings.  Sad feeling.  Powerless feelings.  Hysterical feelings.  POWERFUL FEELINGS.

And because I was so tired of prescribed, rational thinking, I went full on GRRRRRL.  "Feelings ARE thoughts," I yelled (in my Sarah McClaughlin approved journal).  It's just that you fools have been privileging the rational/mind over the intuitive/body.  I felt a new power in feeling what I felt unapologetically, as a sort of protest, really.  For men, and for women.

So, as I'm writing this, I'm beginning to realize that this will take more than one blog post.  Let's all just take a rest here and remember what it felt like to hear Hole or L7 or Babes in Toyland for the first time. 

Next week:  Redlipstick and a Typewriter: A Grrrrl's Guide to Graduating with Honors in a Less Than Honorable System


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