What Girls Are Made Of

As long as there have been women," Mom told me, "there have been ways to punish them for being women.

I'll walk as fast as I want, and I will take breaks whenever I feel like it. There is no one to follow, no one to keep up with. There's just me and this one beautiful day, this one moment, right here, now.

I'm more than any of the parts of me—I am more than my good parts, and more than my bad ones. I am more than my mistakes. I am more than my memories. I will say these words again and again, like an anthem, like a prayer, until I believe them.

It's not new, our valuation of young female people for how they can serve, satisfy, and satiate. Our girls are both the platter and the meal, and we eat them up--we eat their meat, we lap up their sweetness, we covet and control and consume.

We can believe things that are true, and we can believe things that are not true. Which is more important---what is true, or what we believe?

You can't make people love you. Love isn't something you earn, or something you deserve. Love just is. Or it isn't. Anyway, there are more important things than love. Like service. Being of service. With love, you're waiting around for someone to give it to you. But service, that's something you give. And you don't have to give it just to people you love. It doesn't matter who you serve. It's the serving that matters.

That's who unconditional love is for - dogs and their masters, fools and their gods.

There is no such thing as unconditional love," my mother told me. "I could stop loving you at any time.

The way I see it," Bekah says, "you've got to do the things that make you feel good. Being active--doing things, making things better in whatever ways I can--that makes me feel good. Being passive--waiting around for other people to do things for me or to me--that makes me feel shitty. So, feel shitty or feel good. I choose good.

Maybe they're not "real" orgasms, since they're always when I'm alone. It's like that question: If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound? Probably solo orgasms don't count if a boy isn't there to witness them. To cause them.

Now though, what is expected of me is different. As a woman in my forties, it seems that what is expected is for me to fade, to fold inward and to disappear.

When I was fourteen, my mother told me there was no such thing as unconditional love. “I could stop loving you at any time,” my mother said.

As long as there have been women,” Mom told me, “there have been ways to punish them for being women.