Living With The Struggle
The struggle is real.
This is the struggle to see men as worthy of empathy. No, they do not make it easy. And everyone and their brother and misogyny-internalised sister collude to shame me for not feeling more empathy. Who will explain that empathy cannot be forced? That shaming and attacking only create fear and resentment, not love and trust.
I’ve been watching the Netflix series Living With Yourself and all I can think of is, so he got bored and decided to create two of himself? WOW. I’ve been part of some conversations examining my past. I’ve managed to create some objectivity and see that the monster’s actions were results of his own damaged psyche, possibly very real mental health issues. Except, how convenient – when a man is hurt or ill, he gets to violate a woman. And she gets attacked for bleeding. Again, WOW.
The rage of women works very differently from the damn-the-consequences bluster of men. It’s slow and quiet and permanent. I don’t know if I can ever go back to respecting men. I can see the men around trying and failing miserably. I can see how desperately they grasp for validation from me, for help from anybody. And I can’t bring myself to care. And without respect or caring, there can be no empathy.
Much of the time I feel peace and balance because I have a clean, tidy life that needs minimal engagement with men. That which I have to, is codified into rituals and time-bound interactions. It’s convenient and it’s temporary and shallow. What lies beyond that? Irritation, horns-honking, nails-on-chalkboard jarring irritation.
I get a number of DMs from strange men commenting on my lipstick (at posts that are about life and emotions and love) and when I can summon up the energy, all I wish is that their eyes be donated to sightless children. There’s the frequent MRA that attempts to be relevant by telling me women do this too and I can’t even be bothered with telling him he’s wrong.
What an exhausting world. This struggle is real.
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I’m Ramya Pandyan (a.k.a. Ideasmith) and I’m on Twitter and Instagram.
