7

We are all patronizing to someone at sometime in our lives. The least we can do is admit to it and attempt at overcoming this reaction to our insecurities. What is bizarre and what inevitably becomes impossible to bear, however, is being a woman of the twenty-first century living in the United States, born in the Y generation, and having a male four months your junior patronize you.

He would often say, "Can you smile for me?" and I would find that intolerable. Perhaps the most intolerable and unforgivable request ever asked of me. And yet, I would smile anyway so that I might not have to hear that inquiry for a second time but it made me feel terrible, as if I were rapping the gates of Stepford each time I cracked a smile. These hints soon became beacons and they soon began to accumulate. The biggest beacon of red light manifested in the rejection I received when I became the whistle-blower on his behavior and it was the one I ignored the most. I think that only now I can understand. For some, maybe most, one is not beaten into submission but one is essentially coerced into it through a gradual process that degenerates one's self-assurance and self-confidence until nothing of the self is left. Opinions, once lauded for their depth of understanding and their wisdom, soon become scoffed at and later laughed at. Emotions, which were once accepted as part of the human condition, become regarded as something detestably effeminate, frivolous or even volatile. It is after this gradual process that one cannot even see when one's natural reaction to hurtful and misogynistic sentiments is looked at as if it were a used tampon. Thus, one despises one's self for reacting to anything for it will inevitably be met with rejection and/or disgust. From here, there are two routes: the first, one can degenerate into complete and total self-loathing or the second, one can become quiet and numb. Then, maybe, you disappear entirely. You can become a shadow, his shadow, forever eclipsed by him. You can become the moon and shine with his light but your identity is but a mere illusion.

If you are told you are crazy enough times by the one you love and trust, eventually you start to believe it. Maybe you are crazy for believing it in the first place. You see it and you hate that you have eyes. You hear it and you hate that you have ears. You feel it and you hate that you have a soul. Can you blame those women, then, when you yourself know it is not a lack of intelligence that makes them obedient or a voluntary loss of self-worth but rather an unconscious mechanism? What can you do when you cannot even know you are dead? And what do you do, can you do, when you finally wake up in the middle of that ocean of depression and realize that the one who held your head beneath the waves was the one you loved the most?

It was a summer afternoon while walking the dog I realized he did not understand. It was on the phone in September that I realized he earnestly believed he deserved a prize. It was in the back of a concert hall in March when I realized he could not care less about me. It was at the dinner table when I realized who he would grow up to be. It was in a Macy's when I realized I became a second mother. It was in a Bed Bath and Beyond in June that I realized he thought he was the Jesus Christ for emotionally damaged women. It was on a bike in August when I realized he was one of those guys who wore cargo shorts and had an opinion on just about everything not realizing women in the vicinity had those things too. It was on a couch around ten o'clock when I realized he was abusive. It was in the garden of a friary the following afternoon when I realized misogyny was alive and well. It was November when I realized nothing would change. It was not until January at a coffee shop when he realized those things too. Maybe.

Can it be truly a tragedy that these moments as well as the others will be remembered in greater and more vivid detail than all of the tender embraces, soft kisses and sweet nothings if I feel free from the yoke of tyrannical love?

My heart sometime skips a beat when I feel around for that little shackle around my finger and find it to be missing. When I look down, however, I see one out of ten fingers disfigured and emaciated by commitment. This is what I have to remember him by; his lasting impression on me.