I wrote this thinking of a friend whose life had been so long controlled by her need for male approval and her social conditioning that Life and its living passed her by. And I think of the unhappy woman who said to me “I hate my husband but I can’t divorce him, or I’d be the bad guy. I just wish he’d die.” I think of these women and wonder “How many others?”  and “Why do we offer people such limited dreams?”

Stranded

Jessie sighed quietly and let her eyes drift once again to look at the dark skies above. She had wandered from the house in order to watch the stars and where she could let her tears of rage and sorrow flow freely. How she hated this body with its weight and aging! She had waited for something to happen all her life and now, it was too late. She had tried to get better jobs that would pay enough to live on, dreaming of escape, but she was always passed over.. “we need someone with more visual appeal”, “more experience in a secondary field”, “more flexible”, “ a higher degree”, but she knew the truth: she was now always the oldest women in the office, and if she divorced, she knew what it would be like: the looks of scorn, or pity, or worse, the assumptions of who and what she was. The cast-off, the left behind, the first but not the last, the one nobody wanted, maybe a lesbian or a … and even in the cool night air, she had blushed, knowing she, too, had treated older, single women this way when she was younger. Why was this done to us? Who did this benefit?

All her life she had been told that her value rested in male approval, obtaining a husband- the ultimate in proof of worthiness! And it didn’t matter what kind of man it was. Oh, she’d watched all the shows and read all the stories that promised a virile, loving, attentive, handsome man, but that had been a lie she had believed because everyone and everything told her True Love was Out There- all she needed to do was wear the right make-up (“No man likes an ugly woman who won’t try to look her best”), the right clothes (“You need to put yourself out there, dear, let him see what you have”), walk the right way (“Don’t stomp so much Jessie- you’ll never attract a man that way!”), speak the right way (“Not so loud, Jessie! You sound like a fish wife on market day!”), and always, always, make the man feel better than her, smarter than her, let him be the “head of the house” and never complain!

To read the rest of this story, see link to The Twilight Mirror and the New Dawn by Jordan Amar

© 2021 Eschate