An Existence Reimagined

A Reflection On Womanhood and Writing

Liz Ruddy
Liz Ruddy
Aug 27, 2017 · 5 min read

I lie in bed with a boy who does not love me and watch Daenerys stand calmly in front of all the Khals of the Dothraki, unfazed, while a man says things to her that feel far more familiar than her scathing reply.

I watch her smile; I see the assurance in her eyes that only an army, three dragons, and a superhuman immunity to fire can evoke, and my heart soars as she burns them all alive and emerges unscathed from the fire of her fury.

I wonder, is this what a brave woman looks like?

Because I do not feel brave — not when I tell my favorite Professor how much I like sci-fi, how I want to write it someday, and he exclaims in front of the mostly-male class that I’m a comic-con nerd’s wet dream. I do not have a witty retort. I do not have a dragon. I laugh awkwardly, and I let it go.

I do not feel brave when the man at the grocery store tells me to smile, and I do, nor when my first boyfriend tells me not to wear that slutty shirt, so I don’t. I wonder why bravery is taught to women only after civility. I forget when exactly I learned that his pride was more valuable than my body.

I do not feel brave when the man on the street tells me I’m beautiful. I ignore him, as I always do, and he stops, as they often do, and he approaches me. He repeats himself, “I said you’re beautiful. Miss. Miss, I said you’re beautiful. I’m fucking talking to you.”

I do not feel brave when I thank him. He rips the words out of my throat against my will, and they stick there like throwing stars in my esophagus. I was often told to watch the sharpness of my words, but was never warned that it was because my greatest weapon might one day be used against me.

When the man turns away and tells me smugly, “That’s all you had to say,” I forget for a moment that I am not brave, and a single, jagged, “Fuck you,” unsticks itself and flies towards him with a vengeance.

“It’s a compliment. Don’t be a bitch.” “Don’t harass random women on the street.” “It’s not fucking harassment. You want to see harassment? I’ll show you fucking harassment.” “Don’t touch me. I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

The apologies are harder to swallow, but it isn’t the first time a man has held my mouth shut and told me to do so.

I re-play these moments in my head afterwards; I reimagine them as I would relive them with age, and experience… or a black belt. I practice my bravery in the mirror, like learning the lines to a script that changes every day but never passes the Bechdel Test. I don’t get the part.

But one day, a boy at work says something wrong, and although I don’t feel brave, I feel angry. So I take that anger and I turn it into poetry — because a blank page is safer than a sidewalk, because my words only feel like they belong to me when they come from my fingertips instead of my tongue.

When I post my reply, some tell me that isn’t courage — that I should say what I need to say to his face instead of to the public, as if it is more difficult to defend myself against one man than an angry mob of them.

As if I thought this would be easier.

I still do not understand what a brave woman looks like, but I do know that as the ‘shares’ tick up to the thousands, I think I’m starting to understand how Daenerys felt when she watched the walls catch fire.

I never intended to use my writing this way. My words are not meant to burn; they are meant to open doors to new worlds, to new truths. My words are not weapons, they are keys — but I wield them between trembling knuckles because I’ve been left no other choice.

So I will write, because I would rather create my own world than live in one in which I have no voice. My words may be powerless in man’s mortal existence, but here they are magic. Here, I am God — I create as I speak.

I build bridges of winding sentences more treacherous than the streets I dare not walk alone, and rip apart the paragraphs of privilege upon which lesser men proudly walk. When the slighted men attempt to tell me that I am being too dramatic, their letters bleed together, spill down the page, and become a black hole of smudged ink and semicolons. The men only understand the gravity of their actions when it drags them into the abyss. Here, I do not swallow my words — my words swallow them.

Here, when my Professor tells me I’m a comic-con nerd’s wet dream, I become his worst nightmare. When he condescendingly recommends to me books and comics I have already read, I tear out the pages and fold them into paper roses to lay at the foot of his grave. When he insists Margaret Atwood and Mary Shelley aren’t “real” sci-fi, that women who try to write the genre often make it too “soft,” I do not smile politely — I smile with pointed teeth. There is nothing soft about the ending of his story.

Here, on the page, the man at the grocery store tries to speak, but his words wind back into his mouth like a cobra and he chokes. Here, the slutty shirt twists itself into a noose and wraps around my boyfriend’s neck. Here, when the man on the street tells me I’m beautiful, I tell him I know, and when he’s affronted by my audacity, I laugh, the ground trembles, he falls to his knees, and here —

Here, he cannot touch me.

Liz Ruddy | facebook | twitter |

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