Waking Up Alone

Do what you gotta do

Do what you gotta do
Come on back to see me when you can
Man I can understand how it might be
Kinda hard to love a girl like me
I dont blame you much for wanting to be free
I just wanted you to know
I've loved you better than your own kin did
From the very start its my own fault
What happens to my heart
You see I've always known you'd go

So you just do what you gotta do
My wild sweet love
Though it may mean that i'll never kiss
Those sweet lips again
Pay that no mind
Find that dappled dream of yours
Come on back and see me when you can

Now I know they make you feel sad
And make you feel so bad
They say you dont treat me like you should
They got ways to make you feel no good
I guess they got no way to know
I've had my eyes way open from the start
And man you never lied to me
The part of you that they'll never see
Is the part you've shown to me

So you just do what you gotta do
My wild sweet love
Oh it may mean that I never kiss
Those sweet lips again
Pay that no mind
Find that dappled dream of yours
Come on back to see me when you can

--nina simone

So I was inspired last night by a book that I'm now reading. It's a book about waking up as a woman to the patriarchal society we live in, and the feminine wound that lives within us. She writes from a christian background, and talks about how the exclusion of women and the subjugation of women in the church teaches girls early on where their place is, and that they were put in that place by their father, their god.

It makes me angry to read this book. I feel the anger of having been an unconscious unambiguous woman. I am angry because for 12 years of my catholic education I got straight A's. I learned my lessons and gave the right, insightful answers. And all the while I thought I was being more than a good girl. I was the first girl to serve mass as an altar server, I was the first girl to be a "flag boy" responsible for the flying of the flag and the folding of it.

But all the while, when I thought I was making changes, I wasn't even scratching the surface of the social norm.

Reading this book has brought daydreams to my mind in which I walk to the altar to lecter a reading, and instead of reading the prescribed reading, I read one I've chosen. One in which the second class citizenry of woman is anything but subtle, and from which the congregation would have to face their own book and say "No, this is not what I believe." I also imagined myself arriving on sunday morning while people were filing into church, and taking a hammer and nail to the door of the church and posting a sign that read "The closed door of the priesthood closes this door to me". So many times since starting this book have I thought to myself, how do I respond? Do I take this one day at a time and just work on me, or am I responsible for greater social change?

I havent figured it out that far yet. I'm still at the very motivating and yet frustrating Anger stage. I have a feeling I'll be there a while.