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CUTTING THE THREADS.

By on June 5, 2017
wrists good

By Jeanette Meditz

Arriving for my school volunteer stint one May morning, I confidently sauntered down to the hotdog stands.
Watching the middle schoolers chomping into their fare, I began sensing a familiar and uncomfortable ‘creep’ which started at the base of my spine and manifested in the conversations that ensued.
I have never described myself as psychic but on this morning, I could have done so without any qualms.

Politely asking who was in charge, I met with a certain amount of confused nonchalance.
Undaunted, I doggedly asked the next person and the next until someone met my eyes.
The gorgeous woman I addressed started speaking with an odd sense of personal denigration.  When she belittled herself as one of lowest of the low, and that I wasn’t to ask her for directions, I understood her sentiments perfectly well.

As strange as that may sound to some people, I intuitively recognized the woman’s self-descriptive as one that is expected in the realms of who is who in my neighborhood.
She knew her role and clearly maintained it.
Simultaneously, I noted that her companion gave me the ‘’up, down’’ treatment.

Shutting off a desire to quickly run, I marshaled my wits and sought the one women who looked like a leader.

Whilst walking in her direction, I felt a wave of judgment pinging at my psyche from a well-put-together woman who stood to the side of the leader.
This vixen’s gaze was laced with that damned air of judgment that I have worked so hard not to absorb in my dealings with the women who live here.
It is hard not to feel less than them, ever.

The feeling one gets when visually targeted by one of these females is akin to being punctured by air-waved venom.
Coming across them, it is as if every pore of their visages convey to their target that she is not one of them and therefore, she does not matter.
In their world of getting things accomplished, a person can develop a distinct impression that most people probably can not do anything right according to these women’s social standards.

Meeting eyes with this she-cat, I felt inferior without her uttering a word.
I deliberately spoke solely to the leader and ignored the viper to her left but the venom had begun to take effect.

Inwardly reeling with insecurity, I plastered a friendly smile on my face and made a pretense of confidently asking where I should start the cleanup process.

Amazingly, almost any woman will know exactly what I am talking about when I attempt to describe the experience of being visually taken apart.
I focused on the woman I was addressing and tried to blind myself to the discreetly snarling, blonde bombshell beside her.
I felt the poison of her rejection as keenly as if she had slapped me.

I was becoming more uncomfortable by the second.
Flustered, I reacted poorly when the leader began apologizing to the other woman.  She barely included me in her monolog and proceeded to mutter about wrong times being put on the sign-up sheets.
What a horribly embarrassing scene the conversation became.
I felt an instant surge of anger flooding my system.
What a boondoggle of an operation this was rapidly becoming in my simply-wanting-to-volunteer-at-my-kids’-school-event eyes.

The leader glibly stated that she would not blame me for not returning,   I could not stop myself from blushing at her error and politely backed away in shame.
I felt like a scared rabbit prepared for an attack,  submissively answered the request to return later and rapidly turned heel.

Annoyed at myself for once again backing down to a rude and incompetent cow, I made my best effort to disappear quietly and leave without a trace.

Hell, it was not even my mistake and I was red-faced!

Before pitching up at this event, I had raced through my yoga class, driven a little too fast to make sure that I was on time and arrived with a few minutes to spare.

I had prided myself on my ability to manage my time well, had added this event to my schedule and had been on time for it.
After that showdown, I felt like a deluded failure and an abject reject.

What the heck was their emotional heckling supposed to prove?
Was I an idiot in disguise, unaware of the silly display my presence was portraying?
Did I really look and act that ridiculously?

I have dealt with being psychologically taken apart by these nasty women for over thirty years.
One would hope I would have learned my lessons by now but, the truth is, I have not.
Absolutely Threatened Behavior Modification, ATBM, could be a term that I could use to describe the way I have handled this type of snubbing through the years.

As I got into my car, the positive thinking audio that I had been filling my soul with, earlier, mockingly resonated in my head.
Fortifying my soul must have been taking effect because, without too much effort, my inner warrioress proceeded to rise to my defense within a few minutes of calming down.

I was not wrong, was I!

I refused to allow myself one more second of self-sabotaging, character-decimation.
I decided to decide positively and chose to choose me.

images (3)I inwardly declared that I will no longer be placed at the beck and call of these rude people.  This was the straw that broke the camel’s back.  Now, I realized that I could be through with being a submissive dismissive.
My last volunteer spot has been dutifully filled.

From now on, I purpose to focus my attention on doing the tasks that God and Goddess have asked of me.
I am a faithfully devoted wife and mother.  That is my proud claim to fame.
I will reach out to women who really do want to be befriended and stand alongside women who desire to be loving and kind to everyone.

It is a pity that I have never made my way inside this cadre of females. Truthfully, I deeply admire them but I cannot allow myself to be threatened by them any longer.
I am setting myself free of the need to be what I know I am not willing to be.

I left that parking space as a more mature person than when I had entered it.
I am grateful for the wake-up call.

Starting a list of what I do not do, I wrote down a plan of action.
I do not do servitude to ungrateful biotches.
I do not subject myself to the rudeness of people who have more wealth than most of the world has but, strangely enough, always seem ungrateful.
I do not approve of women who continually shun the presence of anyone they don’t approve of simply because they see a stranger.
I do not do self-flagellation because I am unwilling to morph myself into someone whom I am not.
I do not do self-hatred.

I do what works and that is to be fully me.

 

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jeanette

Jeanette Meditz writes about the joy of being a woman. She encourages women to embrace the sacred discipline of self-care with an emphasis upon pleasurable living.

For thirty years, she has been married to the father of her many children and has been a stay-at-home-mom. She blogs at JeanetteMeditz.

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