Letter 19 — Desperate Housewife Just Wants More Time

I don’t have so much time to tell you about the text; I have to go and cook lunch, clean dishes, and clean up the kitchen

Araci Matos
Araci’s life

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Photo by Olga Simonova on Unsplash

Recently, another writer sent me a friendly message.

He asked me how I was doing and how life was going. I replied quickly, trying to be as brief as possible: “I feel more and more like a housewife.”

Then he asked how that made me feel, but amidst the household chores and the countless distractions that plague our minds these days, I didn’t respond.

However, when night fell, and I tried to sleep, an answer lingered in my mind, and I wanted to pick up the phone and tell him, “Exhausted; it makes me feel exhausted.”

It’s no light matter; all the feminist stories or gender inequality reports touch on the time of women and the time of men. I mean that our time, or the time we want to claim as solely ours, for ourselves and our pursuits, is smaller than men’s.

Thus, the time lost in the endless and cyclical work of keeping a house in order adds up by the end of the week to another day or two of work.

I’m guilty; I know it well. I’m guilty because, like many women long trained in domestic chores, I do…

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Araci Matos
Araci Matos

Written by Araci Matos

Trying to be the Portuguese Annie Ernaux or Elena Ferrante

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