The Trappings Of Femininity

We all have demons. Mine chase after me at night when the house falls quiet and my mind begins to rest. There in the shadows my demons lie, soft and beguiling, ready to ensnare. Doubt. Vanity. With furtive smiles and drumming fingertips they feast on my virtue until I am hollowed and empty.

I try to quench the demons with words of encouragement but that only feeds them. I attempt to outrun them in service but they never leave my side. I am embarrassed by them and thus my doubt is fed, giving birth to a vanity that grows and growls.

Being a woman is incredibly difficult. Isn't it though? We are conditioned from all sides to be perfection in form, tiny and lithe, shapely legs, slender torsos, elegant shoulders and graceful necks, youthful features and flowing hair. Inside we are ravaged by diets and worries, binges and purges, shopping and guilt, holding up our personal models on pedestals and knowing their perfection can never be reached because it never even existed. The failings that rage inside of me are inside of you all the same.

Being a woman is incredibly complex. To be so fragile, at the whim of a stronger man's desires, yet to be so strong, so capable of influence. In the juxtaposition we sometimes flounder, putting emphasis on what cannot be controlled and ignoring what positive change we can effect. I think all the time that I will be happy once this is tighter or that is slimmer. I will find peace when my hair lays a certain way or if I can just master the perfectly lined eye. I think that I can finally find myself in the right make up of exterior trimmings. The obvious truth is that this path leads nowhere and too far down this road and we will be lost to ourselves forever. It is obvious truth but sometimes I still can't see it.

Some days I want to trade it in and roam free as spirit instead. I want to escape my boundaries and be nothing but light and love, no visage to be seen but just feelings to impress. Or Heidi Klum. That could be good, too. This body of mine is just too constricting, too many limitations. My outsides will never do justice to my insides; my inner is smothered by the trappings of the outer. In moments where I catch myself fresh-faced and happy in reflection I also catch a terror that it will inevitably leave me; my face will retain water, my clothes will tug in the wrong parts, my color will wane, this cannot be, this cannot last.

Rather than find peace in the fallible of these bones and organs we often mistakenly assume the answer can still be found without.

And so we continue to search, but all we find are demons.