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March 3 - March 5, 2023
That was it, I finally understood. I was not really invisible, but I was now the ghost of who I used to be. Someone whom society valued, saw potential in, and considered vibrant and young and worthwhile. I was the ghost of someone who mattered.
“Your ankles are swollen from carrying the weight of the patriarchy all of these years.”—
Frankly, there is just too much information out there, and they keep sending more shit my way. I’m on eight different platforms at work, and there are four types of ways people can communicate with me that don’t include texts, iPhones, office phones, real mail, or a note folded up like a football. I just got an alert that told me
WHAT WAS THAT POPPING NOISE COMING FROM INSIDE MY BODY? I have no idea, but I’m pretty sure it’s the equivalent of your check-engine light coming on.
the entire population of middle-aged women are showing up to work on three hours of sleep (some with their night meds still coursing through their bloodstream), running meetings, making deadlines, and
And the rest of the world has no idea. Why? Because we are superwomen. Because it’s how we are. We’re high, we’re sleep deprived, and we’re still doing all the shit.
The brilliance of growing older is that with each passing day, you lose an equivalent amount of fear.
In earlier years, I might have let this go. None of my coworkers seemed willing to take up the fight. But I am a different breed, and I had shed almost all of my fear coat. I was also at a point in my life when calling people out for their unfair behavior was not only clearly the right thing to do but also the only thing to do.
People act poorly because other people have let them act poorly, and they have been able to get away with it for a lifetime. There is no sense of consequence.
Sometimes it takes an invisible woman to get something done.
leave it to an invisible woman to yell so loud when it counts that no force can drown her out.
Young people see old people and believe that they were born that way.
We are not born old. We worked to get there. And it is such a surprise when you realize that your new body has been absorbed by a different one; freckles aren’t where they used to be, and parts that were visible are now obstructed. It’s a jarring moment, full of terror, anger, and wonder. It happens to every single one of us who stays alive long enough. But no one sits down and has the Talk with you about how your body is changing, your hormones are dying like they’re on a muddy battlefield in France in 1917, and you’re about to enter a new phase of your life.
Honestly, I don’t get it. Why give me the Talk when I was a child and had no idea what to do with that information but then stay silent as my body takes on the proportions of a melting candle when I could have been developing an informed, offensive plan?
