Unafraid

Just as I get over my fear that I might not be a good mother, I also lose my fear of being annoying!

This is how it happened.

I have been trying to write posts at least the night before. Proofreading tends to be more effective with a rest period in between, and it gives me more time to refine the thoughts. Therefore, the post on tonglen went up Thursday, but I had written it Wednesday night. Regardless of the details, I believe that it was helpful that my mind had been focusing on my sudden epiphany about being enough.

Someone I know posted about the 2nd Amendment. 

I don't really love conflict, but I will fight to the death for what I think is right. In the past that has meant that while I posted frequently and would argue someone disagreeing with my posts into the ground, I rarely took issue with what people posted on their own pages. 

Ignorance has been running amuck so badly, and violence has been increasing, so it is more frequent for me to feel that I have to say something. In this case, I just pointed out that overthrowing a tyrannical government was not the purpose of the 2nd Amendment, and we had a not horrible exchange about that.

But he has other friends.

One of them replied with a poorly thought out string of sentences. It was full of non sequitur and (false) conservative talking points, but sadly lacking in coherence and originality. It was also pretty spotty on punctuation and grammar. This is your person who has been formed by Fox News for years but switched to OAN because Fox was too liberal, though maybe he still checks in with Tucker Carlson.

It wouldn't even have made an impression except for the last sentence.

"Please dont respond because it will just be bullshit." 

How male.

Seriously? I reference articles of the Constitution and historical occurrences and you vomit up a mix of conspiracy theory and sentence fragments that you couldn't tie together if you tried, and you tell me not to respond?

I did write back congratulating him for being an ass. (I used more words, but that was the gist.)

What was important was that he joined a long line of men being irritated when I disagree with them, or say something that threatens their view of things. I get that it's patriarchy, but perhaps it was also more obvious in that moment that they have not earned their position. At all.

If the conclusion to Thursday's post was that I am enough, the other thing that had been coming up a lot in the preceding posts is this fear that I have carried with me that I would annoy someone or take up too much space or be a problem.

In this moment, I knew I was annoying this man, but it was not a problem with me. Not only was I not mortified, annoying him was deliciously pleasing.

There's not this unknown wrongness lurking in me anymore; I know that was one of the steps on the path. Also, I understand a lot more about how societal conditioning and patriarchy works. None of this happened in a vacuum.

But I am not afraid of annoying people anymore. I will not go out of my way to annoy anyone (with the possible exception of puns), but the fear is gone.

Amazing.