Being a woman means a lot more than getting your period or having a fulfilling relationship. I still remember the day everyone congratulated me about being a woman just because I had my first period. If you ask me, I still felt like a little girl and I knew that one could not transform from a little girl to this powerful creature that I saw my mother to be overnight. I didn’t know if I should be happy or scared and say goodbye to my childhood. So, I just decided to see how things would turn out…
Almost ten years have passed since that day and a lot has definitely changed. I fought with myself to get into university and have my dream job in the future, I was hurt, betrayed, I loved, felt loved and lost my first close relative. I saw my body change and with it my character as well.
All this I’m sure is common for most women in the world so I don’t consider myself unlucky or lucky or special. Let’s be realistic. I am currently writing to you from the safety of my home and behind my laptop screen. There are women out there who are fighting demons every day to secure the taken for granted in an otherwise civilized society of equality and justice in 2022. But there is something that I believe unites us all.
One day we just wake up and everyone around us treats us in a completely different way than before. Suddenly we have obligations and responsibilities. Suddenly we learn all about our family’s difficulties and are called to share their burden. Suddenly we open up to the real world. And all this suddenly. I don’t believe we understand it at the moment it happens but if we stop and look back, we will realize how much everything has changed. And the scariest thing is how all of this seems completely normal to us.
I don’t believe that from an age onwards we can remember that little girl who was sheltered in the pink fairy cloud. And I say again. There are women who have never met this fairy cloud.
The woman is and will be a beautiful creature judged by her strength. And it is precisely for this strength that she is much loved or much hated. I don’t know at what age we finally become women. But I know for sure that at some point we leave the little girl behind and we can only remember her with love and nostalgia.
I am writing this text out of my need to be heard and in the hope of helping others do the same. Each of us draws strength from our soul and externalizes it with our words. Privilege or duty?
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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.
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