It was like they were always watching me. Judging me. Finding me lacking. Even when I went to sleep each night, their eyes glistened in the darkness. They soaked up every ounce of ambient light, leaving me vulnerable, cold, and frightened.

What if they came alive?
Would they replace me?
And would she finally be happy?

By daylight, they weren’t any less scary. Frozen in perpetual RBF, always immaculately dressed, the dolls seemed to be a constant delight to the parental figure who claimed the name of “mommy”.

​Some even had their own cabinet, kept sparkling clean like everything else in the structure where we lived.

I, however, had the audacity to BE “less than”… 

I am many things. 
But there are many things, I am not.

I am NOT your ride AND die. 
I am NOT the woman BEHIND the man.
And I am most certainly NOT proving my loyalty by staying home, when I could be out living my life.

Perhaps we can blame this current set of mentalities, like so many other things in modern times, also on the pandemic. Because while such nonsense did in fact exist before, it seems to have taken on epic proportions lately.

​Like this ridiculous notion that I, as a woman, am supposed to prove myself, to a man. Or that I am to stand unflinchingly BEHIND him as his “Queen”, while he goes out and creates a life for “us”.

There are multiple flaws to these being essential qualities for a “good woman”. 

​There is nothing sexy about unbuttered toast. 

It sat in front of me, a single piece, sliced diagonally on the plate. A very small cobalt blue plate. With a glass of water in a lovely wine glass. It was as though serving this poor substitute for a decadent drip of a buttered biscuit on attractive tableware, would make up for it’s complete lack of luster.

The toast looked like I felt. Flaky, dry, as though I would disintegrate when touched. I was practically parched for anything that might have some taste. But this cardboard looking imitation appeared to have been sitting out too long in a desert sun. 

​“Why do you even bother writing?”

It wasn’t the question itself, but rather the insolent way she said it. As though writing was a waste of time. No, wait. That’s not quite it.

As though ME writing was a waste of time.
She was rather nasty the way she asked it, but, for some reason, I still felt compelled to answer.

“I write for myself,” I replied.

She sneered. Looked like she was going burst out in laughter at the response. “For yourself? Hardly.” She halfway rolled her eyes. “If you were truly writing for yourself, why would you even bother to put it on a public website where anyone could see it?”

​I was standing in the woods admiring the light filtering through the leaves, when it hit me. I hadn’t seen a trail marker in quite some time. I turned slowly around in a circle, and suddenly EVERY direction looked like a possibility. Where was a sign when you needed it?

Signs are funny things. We talk about them a lot in society. We ask for a sign that we are doing the right thing. We ask for a sign on which direction to take in life. We ask for a sign as to whether or not we should trust someone. We ask and ask and ask.

Oddly enough for all this asking, it turns we often don’t listen when we receive the requested sign. Especially not when the signs come from our own bodies. Instead we wait and wait and wait for an outside force to give us the information we innately already know.