Some women have home teams that cheer and chant and push and help. Some women have supposed teams that use whispers like knives and sneers aimed at backs like arrows. Some women chew on disappointment like gum over and over and over again until the bitter taste has left their mouths and their jaws are strong enough for the next big blow.
Some women have self-worth running through their veins and some women have self-doubt that hangs from their shoulders and it radiates from their irises. Some women have skin that itches with imperfection.
Some women have silver staples criss-crossing their lips from a stapler that some man was holding years ago in a dark room with dirty carpet. And some women have blisters on their tongues from speaking too much from megaphone mouths.
Too much too much too much.
They say that some women are just too much.
Some women push food around on their plates like they are lining up troops for a battle and no one has told them yet that the Calvary isn’t coming to help them lift the fork to their mouths in order to soothe the aching hunger.
Some women never stop feeling a certain kind of hunger. Some women have worn out tennis shoes because they keep running after more and more and more things, but somewhere along the way, they forgot that some women are just meant for
Less.
Some women delight in a dangerous and delicious undertow – flirting with going under for just a small second and some women are the rescuers. But they say that even the rescuers need a life jacket every now and then.
Some women are sparklers and have teams of wanna be saviors that lap up every one of their words like –
Pets.
Some women are pets designed to stay and roll over at just the right time and don’t you ever think they just want to rip their collars off?
Some women drink the wine on Sundays and can literally feel the fires being put out in their chests. They cling to the red letters and the living hope and the Holy Son but some women still have their hands shackled because they haven’t yet been set free by
The One.
Some women have jealousy biting at the soft flesh of their tummies. Biting at the divots on their thighs. Biting at their thinning hair and at the scars fading on their forearms.
Some women barely scratch the surface of their shine. Some women hardly have the courage to dig into the well of their wild. Some women arrive at the end with so much still left to give because some women let fear crawl up their shins.
Some women are fighters and carvers and they inch their way through cold mud to just get a little farther to make it a little easier for the ones still behind them.
Some women swallow down regret like pennies perfectly fit for slot machines and they choke quietly every time someone plays them.
The thing is that –
ALL women have been trained to maintain a facade that includes gagging on frustrated screams and every single one of us knows how to cover the stain
of the constant refrain
that sounds a little bit like
You’re not good enough.
You’ll never be good enough.
Crazy and caustic and brusque and broken and brazen and wouldn’t it be something if it all just meant
Beautiful?
Bossy and sassy and loud and feisty and wouldn’t it be something if it all just meant that we are
Heard?
Wouldn’t it just be … something?
xoxo, B.
rebeccacooperauthor 