Pain in my soul

Tumors form from the unlistened feelings and emotions inside us.

I have just started to discover the process of freeing my soul from the chains of the suppressive society and embrace her with all the pain she is bearing. Washing her wounds gently, taming her slowly, step by step, to learn about being loved.

What is she trying to tell me? 

A friend, a sister who has already walked through the path of this sickness before shared her insights with me. We both realised that cancer came at a point where, although at different circumstances, the "good girl syndrome" was not sustainable anymore. 

She spoke to me about how to heal. To be determined and to choose healing. To choose life. To choose future. To choose life and everything in it. Indeed, to make choices every single day and to declare fearlessly who you are. 

She also said that she heard somewhere that to forgive and not to hold grudges against anyone frees you as anger hurts and destroys you more. 

I listened to her in awe, drinking her words as a source of life - until the last sentence. A sudden pain cramped my stomach and my body froze.

"But it's about injustice" - I said - "You don't have to hate the sinner, but the sin they did, it can provoke anger. The concept 'to hate for God, for justice' exists" 

She got it.

I got it too, very deeply. I got this unexpressed anger towards everything that ever made me small. That told me to wait quietly until my time comes but it never came. I believed that I had to silence myself and my feelings in order to be accepted and then, one day what I wanted might happen.

This happened in my childhood, in my marriage, in the divorce process and even during the organisation of my medical treatment.

I always had to be patient, considerate towards others feelings, expecting the best and explaining the 777th fault. I had to forgive and forget and let go. Others mistakes are human flaws, but mine are to be dwelled upon for years and characterised basically all the behaviour towards me the following years.

My feelings are invalidated, questioned and swiped off the ground. Yet I'm expected to be strong and nice and unhurt. If I mention something that hurt me in clearly vulnerable situations, I'm called inconsiderate. For having human feelings. Or for being cold. Or for worrying about my rights. And about my life.

All of these are bright examples of patriarchal systems, of misogynistic behaviour.

It's when women are told to accept it, accept it, even if it hurts.

It's when women are told to "have patience" while patience can never mean to tolerate deliberate injustice.

It's when divorce is made so difficult that it's almost impossible, no matter the circumstances. 

It's when in blatant cases of carelessness and neglect, the right of the one who did it is much more important since he "didn't mean it" and "is not a bad man" than that of those who were left without anything. 

It is when the noblest teachings are twisted and turned to serve men's comfort only.

Yes. All those things anger me.

And what makes me sick is not my anger but that it was silenced for so long.  

I want to go out to the rain and shout it all out. Or to dance a haka, a South Pacific warrior dance. To tell all women that you don't have to let it be done to you. That's not piety. That's not sabr. That won't make you a better servant of God. On the contrary, it will make you a servant to unjust and suppressive humans who might look the best to the society, but God knows about their hearts.

I want to articulate that this is not right.

I do hate this injustice. And I know it doesn't make me a bad person. Accepting injustice would.

And I know that it doesn't make me sick to express my anger towards injustice. Silencing it did.

I also know that writing this article won't make any difference in the everyday practices of many people and institutions.

Even if it reached them, even if I told them in their faces it will never happen that they stop, think deeply about it and then they say sorry. (unless it's a personal situation - been there, recognised it right in time as yet another attempt to gain influence).

So after all these words, nothing will change, right? 

People who hurt me will continue their lives as they did. 

I can tell my friends, other women in similar situations, they may smile between their tears, making their beautiful eyes even more sweet, but unfortunately this article cannot give them enough force they need to fly away from their not so golden cages.

Why to bother myself with this then?

Why to focus on negative things now while I need to concentrate on life and health and beauty and friendship and family and love - things that thank God, my life is now about.

I am focusing on the positives. I am inexplicably grateful to God for surrounding me with such wonderful people. And then I am grateful to these wonderful people who think about me, pray for me and support me in every way they can.

But I owe this to myself. To listen to me. To my hurt soul. To the little girl in the corner who is still waiting there for someone to hug her and play with her because she was good and quiet. Who was then acknowledged as an easy child who doesn't need anything. And to the young woman who thought marrying based on a mind decision will save her from heartbreak. Who kept quiet and wasn't complaining - and was, consequently, acknowledged as an easy task. I owe it to the pregnant lady who was worried about her other child at home alone while she was carrying heavy boxes and her senses were questioned. And who, a few months later was forced to leave her apartment and give birth alone, being also denied of her dignity to give her son his rightful name. To who fought and settled with her adolescent and her baby in a foreign country. And who, when following a wonderful vision, finally wanted her rights back, was continuously silenced, emotionally manipulated, avoided, mansplained, etc. for over a whole long year.

I owe it to you, my dear self.

I'm here now. It's alright now. Just cry, the clouds are crying with you too.

What happened to you was very wrong.

And yes, bad things are part of life, but if we see something bad, we should change it by our hands, if we can't, then by our words, and if we can't do even that, by our hearts, meaning that we have to call the bad things on their names inside our thoughts. That's what our religion teaches.

But we were told instead to call the wrong right, to think about negative things as positive, in a way that was messing with our perception and taking advantage of the innocent optimism and the virtue of positive expectations.

No darling. You can say it now. I can hear you, my dear sister, my soul.