Once upon a time, a beautiful young girl was busy looking beautiful when she was plucked from obscurity and thrust into her dream life by forces beyond her control, without being consulted about what her dream life looked like, because who cares! Everyone seemed so sure she was living her dream life that she was elated! Why should she question what everyone else sanctioned?
We do a lot of princess stories at my house. If you can't tell, I have some issues with the traditional narrative. I find myself editing stories as I read: "The beautiful princess *who was strong and smart* went into the forest..."
I was raised on these stories, these Cinderella stories about good girls who kept their heads down, did the right thing and were richly rewarded with *the best* life. Take for example, Gisele Bundchen, who was scouted while eating a BIG MAC, then POOF was on her way to become one of the most iconic supermodels of all time. I’m sure you’re familiar with the teen movie narrative from the late 90’s and early aughts featuring nerdy or goth girls who didn’t fit in, who somehow caught the eye of the big man on campus and were catapulted to prom queen popularity. I love She’s All That as much as anyone, but I wonder if stories like this have conditioned me and a generation of women into doing a lot of waiting. Waiting to be seen. Waiting to be rescued.
A few weeks ago I had a health scare and had to go to the Emergency Room. I’m fine, I passed out due to a little extra estrogen combined with low blood pressure. It was scary, though, and as I lay in the ER bed, I prayed I was fine so I could go back to doing what I do for my family, to enjoy our time together.
Coming home, I realized that was a stupid prayer.
Mom, I’m hungry! Where’s my lightsaber? Can you carry me up the stairs? Can you help me open this? Take me to the bathroom! Help me turn the lights on, I’m scared! Etc, etc, etc.
It is nice to be needed, but I realized that with all the things going on in my life-- the home schooling, the 24/7 togetherness, the overwhelm happening in the world at large-- perhaps my physical body had maxed out it’s input. The rest I needed felt impossible, because if you are a mother you know why. I was waiting to be rescued...because if the damsel in distress doesn’t get rescued after LITERALLY FAINTING, when does she?
Here’s what I learned: you are not going to be rescued unless you wait forever, or until you ask to be rescued, and better yet, if you present a detailed plan for how this looks. No one else is going to do it for you.
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| Because of COVID this damsel in distress couldn't even wait inside to be rescued and had to sit on a curb to wait for her knight in shining Pacifica. |
The next day, after not even being able to sleep without interruption, I sat myself down and said, self, you have been under a lot of stress lately. Admitting this doesn’t make you weak or ungrateful, it makes you honest. The world is literally burning. You are responsible for raising and educating your children. You are a teacher, a nurse, a laundress, a chef, a housekeeper, a playmate, gardener, handywoman, counselor, adjudicator, emotional barometer, etc. No one is going to step in to save you, mostly because everyone is under just as much stress as you are right now, and also because we can’t touch many of the people you ask or pay for help. What this time has taught you is that you are the one you have been waiting for. You are the only one who knows what you need, and it's up to you to communicate it. You are the cavalry. You are going to rescue yourself from this.
I started to establish some boundaries. I am toughening up when my kids guilt me for not playing with them. I remind Elle she can use the bathroom by herself. I am sitting down to eat a meal and encouraging independence if my kids need things while I’m sitting. I allow more screen time than I would like so I can exercise, or write this essay. I am reminding my husband that I need a schedule and a lot of communication before the weekends, otherwise I get swept up in the action and don’t get a break. I wouldn’t say things are miraculously different, but I try to keep one small promise to myself everyday, and by doing so I feel like a person, and I remind my family that I am a person. I am the cavalry, and I’m trying to empower myself to lead a life I love, not just a life that happens to me, as lovely as it may be.
This is hard work, because I have been conditioned to wait, to be rescued, to accept what I have as *ideal* omg enjoy every minute, they grow so fast!, as if my life outside of my children isn’t worth savoring. Anyway, I’m new at this, and as with any new skill, I make a lot of mistakes. Sometimes I give up and give in, sometimes I get bitchy instead of assertive, and oftentimes I want a current of apathy to take me away to just enjoy the view of my kids laughing, and to stop doing the hard work of thinking about and planning for what I want.
I think apathy is weaved into our culture as part of the princess narrative; if we are conditioned to wait and be rescued, why should we care what happens after that? And how convenient for those who are doing the rescuing! They are our heroes, not just because they are saving us from whatever evil may threaten us, but because they are providing a framework for the rest of our story! Once we are rescued, we can just bide our time as one in relation to the rescuer. We become apathetic to our own happy ending because we’re never given the chance to decide what it is. Our conditioning is apathy, and I see it everywhere.
I have encountered apathy in several conversations lately, all of which had to do with our impending election. I can tell these individuals care about the state of our country, but they are also grappling with forces outside of their control, forces and institutions that they identify with, that give them direction and inform their worth. I've heard things like, The system is screwed anyway; they’re all corrupt; Washington doesn’t work! APATHY. Apathy is easy. Apathy is convenient, especially in a world as overwhelming as ours. Apathy can even sound noble sometimes, I don’t know how to pick the lesser of two evils, as if we are above being involved in the systems that structure our lives, as if it’s not our fault that things have atrophied into what they are.
I invite you to rescue yourself from apathy and institutions cloaked as knights in shining armor who think they know what is best for you, who have told you they know what is best for you through their doctrine, their shame, their invitation to belong contingent upon following their rules. You are the only one who can save us from the shit show that is slowly killing us.
Like me with the boundaries, we have to do the hard work of planning for what we want. If we are not content to throw up our hands and be swept up in a current of apathy while things burn down around us, I invite you to first watch Hamilton for a little motivation, and then get to work. I have some ideas if you don’t know where to start:
Turn off Fox News. Please for the love of God turn it off! If you don’t trust other news sources, some places to get unbiased information are Issue Voter and Voter411. It can be overwhelming, so make sure you take in information in small doses (I mean small-- a few minutes at a time) and give yourself a lot of breaks (boundaries!).
Resist the binary.
I live in a community where signs that say “WE BACK THE BADGE” and “THIN BLUE LINE” abound. I would like to invite you to think about racial injustice and policing as more of a spectrum and less of a binary. It is not either Black lives OR the police. It is Black lives, and the police. Resist the binary, in all things, as often as you can.
If you are an “issue voter,” I invite you to read the two articles below to challenge the conventional arguments behind the two big issues, abortion and guns:
https://www.designmom.com/twitter-thread-abortion/
https://www.designmom.com/lets-talk-about-protecting-our-families/
Also, the court has been conservative for decades and Roe has not been overturned. What do you think you're waiting for?
It bears mentioning, Jesus was actually a liberal.
Last -- apathy, if nothing else, is a symptom of privilege. If you don’t think the way you vote matters, or that you don’t have time or energy to think critically and independently about the unique issues that face us right now, it is because you are in a position of privilege. Privilege does NOT mean your life is without hardship, or that you haven’t worked to get where you are. It’s the unspoken advantage that comes with being born into a majority group, and the unique protections and opportunities offered by that majority. Apathy is the privilege of belonging to a group that you trust to keep your life as is, without having to think much about it.
This year has been hard. It’s not getting any easier, but we are getting tougher. Set your boundaries, preserve your mental wellness, and resist apathy. You are the one you’ve been waiting for.
