Attenuation: noun. feeling you must remain small in order to be loved.
You know what I’m sick of?
I am sick of girls and women apologizing for fucking existing.. apologizing for breathing… for taking up space…
for simply being.
and it pisses me off irrationally…
probably because I was one of those little girls, and even now.. her meek presence pops up once in a while exercising extreme caution to keep from being intrusive or crossing any lines. Her entire being.. all of her energy, laser focused on making sure she’s not ruffling any feathers or saying any of the wrong things. All of her sense of self-worth and credibility entirely derived from outside of herself.
Her’s is a life of tip-toes and egg-shells.
So she continues to apologetically fold herself into a tiny parcel with neatly crossed legs and poised arms; Gaze lowered and body bracing. Trying her best to take up
as
little
space
as
she
can.
Spilling over in flashes of defiant recklessness, only to shrink back. Sometimes armoured. Sometimes defeated.
She understands that you must remain small in every way in order to be loved. A small frame, a whisper of a voice ~ agreeable and nice.
She believes the stories, you see. How can she not? She’s bombarded by them.
Blurred lines for breakfast, A barrage of belittling aunty-reproaches in the evenings.
She IS the object they all lay claim to. She IS their property. How silly to be anything but? She simply floats about and manifests according to the needs around her.
No one ever told her otherwise.
Nobody explained that others won’t magically bestow the ‘permission’ she so desperately craves.. The permission to exist. To simply be…
So let’s make a pact. Right here. Right now.
Let’s agree to whisper to our daughters and the little girl who lives within, Cradle her in the deep of the night When the hungry ghosts are the loudest. And tell her what she most needs to hear,
“It’s okay, my darling.
You are loved.
You are important.
You are enough.”
Whisper till there is no doubt in her mind of her birthright ~ to not simply exist, but to thrive.