When I was small I was told that my shoulders were to be covered .
Modesty meant that we should never expose our small, 6 year old tummies. Cover them up.
When I learned about becoming a woman, I felt sentenced to an eternity of imprisonments. Existing forever as a second-class citizen and that my body, my mind, my soul, was only meant for one thing:
birthing children.
Giving birth was my inconsolable fear from the small age of 5,
Until I was 27 and had borne my second baby.
By the time I was 7, I absorbed the culture around me and believed I was lesser than every male man and child that existed and would ever exist.
When I was a teenager the boys explicitly told me that I was less than them in God’s eyes.
They told me that women don’t need to be educated and do not deserve equal access to education.
My school career counsellor told me to be a teacher because it’s a good career for a mother.
My religious instructor taught me that staring in the mirror at myself was vain. And that masturbating was bad; I didn’t know what masturbating was though.
I was so afraid of my own body that when I might have caught a glimpse in the mirror, I dared not to look.
My own skin terrified me.
I was so afraid of breaking rules that I didn’t know I could free bleed in the shower. I thought my blood was dirty.
I was always supposed to be the image of a good woman. Even when I was still a girl.
I existed, embarrassed to exist.
I bled, embarrassed to bleed.
I suffered, embarrassed to suffer.
I felt guilty for feeling angry.
I
felt
guilty.
And I’m still angry.
The Culture of Being 