Contradictory messages or the flight of the phoenix

I often wonder about other women's lives. It is not that I don't have a plethora of women in my life. I have been blessed in that respect. I have an amazingly strong mother, sisters, daughters, aunts and other elders who have made an impact on my life in more ways than I can really set words to. I have had many examples to pick through and identify with, both good and bad. I have had heroines who have inspired me to strive to their glory and I have had examples laid before me that have served as bench marks on what not to replicate. Sometimes I paid the later too little heed and took off, boots laced, down that road that always ends with something like; 'well that was incredibly stupid...I wish I hadn't...'.

What I wonder about, though, is if other women find themselves, at times, crawling out of the morass of days under the covers to find themselves propping themselves up with self-help talk. Things like; "I really am okay. I don't need to feel the guilt of the world because I'm okay." And sometimes this works. Other times, it just sounds hollow and empty.

We are supposed to be all at once; pure and yet erotic, nuturing and yet fierce, soft but strong, beautiful but modest, and above all, always patient and accepting, never taking for ourselves but always giving.

Why are we supposed to be so perfect? What is it in our culture, or perhaps even just human nature that sends this one consistent message amongst all the contradictions; that we are never good enough? We are never good enough mothers, lovers, workers, nuturers, lookers, time managers, cooks, or at our base, humans.


I reject this.

I reject this today.

Today, I am a good enough everything. You know why? Because I can only be who I am.

I have been the innocent and I have been the whore and both of those roles have fit. I have been the rescued and I have been the conquerer. As a woman, I straddle these roles, one foot on each side of the abyss and the world has forced this on me. I do not complain, I simply accept and roll up my sleeves to dig into the dirty work of being a woman. I understand that to live in this world and thrive, there are times when you have to get blood and shit on your hands to get the job done. There are other times, in the quiet of solitude, that ritual cleansing washes it all away and I am reborn.

Like a phoenix from the ashes, we all of us, survive the ever constant contradictory messages that seem to blare out at us from all corners of the earth.

And we fly. Only to burn once again.