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If I Were a Man, You’d Already Know How I Feel

Retraining myself in the art of speaking up

Suzanna Quintana
The Virago

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https://unsplash.com/photos/a-person-sitting-on-a-chair

The trek that words must take from inside my brain to the outside is a long, arduous one.

Here’s how it starts:

First, the thought/idea/opinion is born. Then, like a feral cat in a cage, it wants out — out of my mouth, out of my fingers.

If I were a man — at least the kind of man I’ve observed in my 56 years on the planet — this would be a quick process.

Thought/Idea/Opinion > Open mouth > Set free

Quick. Easy. Painless.

With men, there is no afterparty of thought like there is with women, who after saying what’s on their mind spiral into regret — Did I sound mean? Angry? Too loud? Too brash? Too arrogant? Toooooo much?

Then the final, Forget it I’m never sharing how I feel again!

If you could x-ray the journey any thought of mine has to take, you’d see an obstacle course littered with roadblocks.

I didn’t build it. My childhood did.

And I’ve spent the last three decades of adulthood trying to unbuild it. To raze that fucker to the ground and let all the words trapped by my upbringing loose upon the open prairie.

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