When I was about 12, my mother joked that she liked boys more than girls. It was as if heaven had struck me.
I clearly remember my state of innocent astonishment: How could that be? I repeated the same questions: “What?.. How?.. I am so nice, so beautiful, so smart, so cute… Why are boys better than me?” And the most striking thing was, “Why does my mother find boys preferable to me? Why does my mother love them more than me?”
I got lost in the unasked questions that rained down inside my head.
It was summer. My brother and my cousins were in the room; our parents were finishing their dinner.
Of course, it was a joke, and my mom loved me. She simply did not accept either her own woman’s nature or my girl’s nature that was soft, malleable, fluctuating, shifting like song and dance.
She added to her joke that “girls are so… so fluid, well…”
Nobody seemed to pay any attention to that phrase; everyone continued along. Except me. I haven’t forgotten those words for more than 35 years. And how could I have lived if I had not remembered them?!
Of course, there were more than just those words. I was raised in an environment where a woman’s nature was not accepted. It was like radiation. There were few explicit messages like the joke, but a lot of implicit ones. I learned to deny my feminine nature by not accepting my tenderness, my body, my appearance and state of mind.
Parents’ love is vital for children; we need to feel that our parents love us, give us attention and care. Children die physically if no one looks at them, no one talks to them – even if they are given the necessary care: feeding, hygiene and medicine. All of us are so dependent on our parents that we sometimes cannot even imagine it. So am I.
My feminine nature started to be prohibited in acts, feelings and mindset. Drip by drip, I guess, I made a decision to give up on myself as a girl, as a woman, to give up on my feminine nature, to suppress my original woman’s behavior and features.
Of course, it wasn’t like I made a decision and told myself I would no longer be a girl, but I did it unconsciously. I gave up on myself, I betrayed myself as a woman, and all that was done to gain my mother’s love and follow her patterns of behavior.
Yes, children are ready to do anything to get the vital love of their mothers and fathers. And though a child may be turning forty, she or he may still be yearning for that love. Like I still do. I believe that my unconscious solution for tackling this controversial issue of how to stop being a woman while indeed being a woman to feel my mother’s love found a way to get the body to attack itself. And the body simply obeyed the order to destroy a woman’s organs to prevent her from becoming a real woman and a mother in the future. Our bodies just follow the implied orders of our unconsciousness because no explicit idea of limiting my authentic girl’s behavior or damaging my girl’s body has ever been identified mentally.
(…to be continued…)
2021: Conceived – Volume 2 of a Contemporary Transadaptation
January: The Pack – Alejandra Baccino (Uruguay)
February: The Pink Shirt – Talia Stotts (America)
March: Dragging the Past out into the Light – Kate Korneeva (Russia)
April: Looking Forward to Spring – Marilin Guerrero Casas (Cuba)
May: Every Little Thing – Gennady Bondarenko (Ukraine)
June: The Girl Who Chased the Rainbow – Toni Wallis (Sarah-Leah Pimentel) (South Africa)
July: Another World – Jonay Quintero Hernandez (Spain)
August: Life after Nare – Nane Sevunts (Armine Asryan) (Armenia)
September: Meeting My Homeland – Rayan Harake (Lebanon)
October: Catching Water (Part Two) – Javier Gomez (Argentina)
November: Remember – Seyit Ali Dastan (Turkey)
December: I Can’t Breathe – Veronica Cordido (Venezuela)
Background – Context
In the Middle – Prelude to a Contemporary Transadaptation, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2020)
Peripatetic Alterity: A Philosophical Treatise on the Spectrum of Being – Romantics and Pragmatists by Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
La Syncrétion of Polarization and Extremes Transposée, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2019)
The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2018)
L’anthologie of Global Instability Transpuesta, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2017)
From Wahnsinnig to the Loony Bin: German and Russian Stories Transposed to Modern-day America, (eds.) Angelika Friedrich, Yuri Smirnov and Henry Whittlesey (2013)
Emblems and stories on the international community
Perception by country – Transposing emblems, articles, short stories and reports from around the world
Credits
Cover photo: Moscow, Russia – On the street – Alexander Popov (Unsplash)
Source: The Codex of Uncertainty Transposed