Everywhere I look nowadays, damaged women are our protagonists of choice. We love to see female characters struggle with the daily pressures of womanhood, while also staring a dark past in the face. Women are expected, on varying levels, to carry heavy amounts of baggage and have to have enough substance to present ourselves to the world.
It’s as though we have to make our current existence and state more palatable by telling others, “I am the way I am because of these dark things in my past. I hope you love and accept me because I have been damaged in ways that conventionally make me unlovable.”
Every day, I feel as though I have to justify my confidence, or what others perceive as bitchiness, by telling others I used to have self-esteem issues. I am not allowed to be emotionally guarded just for the sake of being so, and have to explain myself by saying that I have endured varying levels of abuse to make people accept my lack of trust in others.
Looking into the depths of our own narratives reveal many things, especially in the times of #MeToo. However, maybe it’s time to understand that perhaps these experiences happen to all women. If all women have a story, then isn’t it the case that women who don’t have a story are outside of the norm?
Perhaps the patriarchal institutions that hurt us again and again are the ones that tell us that we have to wear and hide the scars of the things that happen to us. It’s time that we stop telling ourselves that we are not damaged, that we are lovable regardless of the things that have hurt us in the past, and to stop considering ourselves as damaged goods that only deserve less.
I am here to tell you that you are not damaged. You are you, regardless of whatever your story may be. The world wants us to hide in the fear of what it has done to us. As such, we cannot let societal expectations of what it means to go through certain experiences control how we present ourselves to the world.
Own who you are. Proudly continue to exist in the skin that is your own, without letting those experiences control how you perceive yourself. At the end of the day, you are still you, regardless of how the world tells you you’re supposed to feel because of your experiences. Live your life as you see fit, and let go of whatever is holding you back.