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 difficult sometimes. 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 all of us all the same.

Being a woman is complex sometimes. 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 I sometimes flounder, putting emphasis on what cannot be controlled and ignoring what positive change I can affect. 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. 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 I will be lost to myself 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, nothing to be seen, only 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. In moments where I catch myself fresh-faced and happy in reflection I also catch a fear that it will inevitably leave me; my face will retain water, my clothes will tug in the wrong parts, my color will fade, this cannot be, this cannot last.

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

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