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The extra challenge

published: 2008-10-20

These past few weeks I have been extremely busy and therefore simply did not have the time to drink coffees or eat petit fours in pretty patisseries. Juggling work and a child, and getting that right next to being a relatively good girlfriend, sister, daughter and friend is a big enough challenge as it is. It has taken me a few years to achieve certain things, one of them being that my closest friends (I've lost a few in the process) and family now support me in my work as a writer. But then there's 'the others' – the people who somehow do not understand. Despite you going at lengths to apologize and explain why this week, and only this week, you need your time and focus, still these people get angry and upset with you for not having been cute. I've been trying to figure out why. And I've come to believe that it's only because I'm a woman. If I were a man, the entire world would be tiptoeing to my every stressful deadline and loving me for being so busy. Not so when you're a woman. I think it all starts here: when a little girl enters a room, we all 'oooh and aaah' at how pretty her dress is or her hair clips are. And we compliment her for being nice. Nobody ever tells a little boy how pretty his pants are. But when he kicks a ball, really really hard, we exclaim, 'well done! Kick it again. Maybe this time you can even kick the ball over that tree, into the sky, up to the stars, past the moon. Go for it, the world is yours.' 






2 Responses to “The extra challenge”

  1. Strasse says:

    You should loosen up a little towards man, we’re not all evil. Hope you can check by my mailadress I’m not the man/woman you think or hope, I’m just Strasse, no more no less and like you think you’re a relativaly good sister, friend, mother and daughter I think I’m doing my best to be a relatively good person.
    When I said that I started to like you it was partly joking partly true (I visited at that point already your site) but I just tried to be a little funny and informal, clearly I was misunderstood, this has been a problem for me all my life, nobody seems to get who I am, so be it.

  2. aliefka says:

    @Strasse, to the outside world who you are is merely how you portray yourself as being. See it as a consolation: we can all pretend to be something, but who we really are remains a secret for us to know.

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