It’s 21:20 on a Wednesday evening
And I realise that she needs to go.
This image, this woman I expected to be by the age of 25.
This image of perfection.
She grew in my head, nurtured by the good words of others.
‘You’ve got this’
‘You’re so bright’
‘You’ll go far’
But maybe that was the problem;
She wasn’t organic,
She was man made.
Grown in a culture of compliments with not enough dose of self belief.
She would then graduate and join the company called comparison.
Where interviews are easy to come by with adverts on Instagram, Twitter and in real life too.
The only criteria needed was a spoonful of unbelief and before you know it you’ve eaten a tubful of insecurities.
The turnover rate is criminally low;
Some never leave the company
But she has decided to turn herself in.
She’s tired of anxiety alarm waking her up
And unspoken tears whisking her to sleep.
But this woman. This woman in her head needs to go.
They used to be joined at the synapse but life got in the way and try as I might to keep up with her she’s not there. Or maybe it’s me.
I’m not where she thought I’d be at 18.
21- I’m still not there
25 is round the corner & there’s no sign of her there too.
Is it bad to say I sometimes mourn her; a figment of my imagination.
I no longer want to be held hostage by the woman of my dreams.
I’m much more interested in the women of my reality because I have control over her.
I’m not going to be bound by what she thinks I should’ve accomplished by whatever age because even if they never came I’m still me.
And even though she occasionally whispers words of doubt I don’t have to listen. And soon she will die a slow natural death.
Her time is up.