What the bleep did I know???

"We can now 'have it all,' we just need to adjust what that means on a personal basis. Having it all doesn't have to mean a 6 figure salary by age 25, though it can; it doesn't have to mean two kids, a dog, and an SUV by age 32, though that too could be an option. Having it all can be leading a productive and happy life surrounded by people that we love, co-workers that we like and respect, and doing something that we feel to be important, whether for the 'greater good' or not."
---Ilana Dann - 2000 (Just after the birth of my child - still illusorily hopeful)

www.student.brynmawr.edu/orgs/cnews/012800/womanhood.html


What the fuck? I love finding this crap, these random stray bytes of information on myself floating about the web. I say this with the bitterest, most sardonically curling lip. What the fuck did I know about having it all? I feel like I don't have squat. No, that's not fair, but frankly, the twisting of words that I couldn't have meant so rigidly straight-up for the marketing purposes of corporate private university ABC.edu well, it just stinks!

I love being a mother, and I, believe it or not, have been doing ok for the last several years, but spewing about a fulfilling life and all... it all just still hurts... and no, I have no SUV, nor do I want one... ever... and no, no excitingly posh six-figure salary either:( what do I have? Well, I _am_ back in academia, which is fab, just that it also means the devolving of everything else I was, back into a fetid pile of excrement. I am now suddenly selfish for just wanting to be able to think for a few moments, by myself, to be sad, alone, to not have to share every last intimate detail of my psyche on demand.

How would I re-think this immortalized less-than-aphorism??? I _do_ still think that as women our bodies should belong to us - none of this corporal hijacking - and that the choices we make with regard to our bodies should not be used against us, with the grand inquisitors breathing down our necks, their medieval machines of torture clanking to life...
The Scarlet letter A - for academic - eternally devoid of our feminine charm, or paying the price. Burning the candle at both ends, and finally, what? A brighter light that burns out faster? A quickening? A flutter? The butterfly breaking from its chrysalis, a painful re-emergence as a beautiful form alight, painful for all that knew her. And for her former self. And so much closer to her demise.