You Don't Actually Owe Anyone Anything
I have come to the understanding that a womxn’s menstruation is more than a time to shed blood. It is a time to shed suppressed emotions, to shed tears laced with our deepest fears, it is a time to shed womb memories from our ancestors, and it is a time to shed our own womb trauma. For to be a womb-being on this earth is to know trauma.
You Don’t Actually Owe Anyone Anything.
My best friend and housemate Amber – previously known to long time readers as Zimbabawia – said this when I got off the phone.
I was upset.
Upset because I could sense a pattern emerging from my new interaction with a man.
Three weeks ago I had gone on the red hot pursuit of him. For the first two weeks I thoroughly enjoyed our communication, but as I entered the third week my interest was waning, and I felt myself less and less available.
It is important to note that when we began communicating I was in the Summer phase of my cycle, Ovulation. Fast forward two weeks and I had moved through Autumn and was well on my way to Winter – menstruation. Having become so much more aware of my emotional relationship to my menstruation this makes sense, Autumn and Winter are times for shedding and turning inwards.
On our call I spoke my brutal truth – ‘I actually don’t want to be asked questions, in fact I really don’t feel like talking to you at the moment. I just don’t want to connect online.’
Afterwards I was feeling like shit. In fact as I write this I can feel a heavy, dense and dark presence looming over me, and my laptop.
I spoke my truth to this kind man. Yet as I did it I kept hearing a voice in my head saying: ‘You’re a tease. You’re leading him on. You’re wasting his time.’
These harsh words are so against my core beliefs that although it was painful to hear, I thought, well maybe it’s because they’re really true? Maybe I hurt people with my desires, my flirtation, my wants.
You Don’t Actually Owe Anyone Anything.
Amber said this to me as I nestled my heavy head into her bosom, laying on the couch. And something landed. We stayed there for hours and my subconscious mind was coming to a deep sense of realisation.
You see, in the past I have been called those things: You’re a tease. You lead him on. You wasted his time.
I’ve been called them by men, by womxn, and even by family members. Although every time I fought the labels vehemently, I didn’t have any foundational evidence as to why that wasn’t true. When it happens enough times, you start to believe the labels you are assigned.
Cuddling on the couch finally gave me the time and connection that I needed to uncover my evidence.
It wasn’t long ago that I found out what the word boundaries meant. When I was told that I didn’t have strong boundaries I thought the person making this claim was talking about a fence around a paddock… I think that says enough.
But it was true, I didn’t have boundaries. When I began to be a sexually active young womxn I delighted in flirtation, banter, and randy dancing,and when things started to turn up a notch, and the receiver of my flirtation made an advance, I didn’t know how to back out of the situation…
I had initiated this flirting. This dancing. This Banter. So that meant I wanted it. Didn’t it?
I didn’t. But I did it anyway. Because I thought I had too. Because I believed I owed it.
It = my body, my mouth, my pussy.
This went on for some years, then eventually something started to shift. I remember a few times when I had engaged in an evening of flirtation and the recipient went to make the next move, I expressed my objection. My no.
And that’s when I got it: You’re a tease. You lead him on. You wasted his time.
From the men, from womxn, from a family member. I was fed this dialogue and I was furious.
Why was I being punished when it did not feel like I was doing anything wrong?
No one had an answer for me. I was left with these accusations, I didn’t even know I had taken them to be my truths.Until this week.
When I told that beautiful man my truth, that I wanted to reduce our communication, that I don’t want to connect online – there were two parts of me present.
First: The empowered, Goddess, Queen, part of myself who knows how to listen to her truth and then SPEAK it.
Second: My young, newly developed sexual little womxn. The one who was coerced into believing, ‘You owe them something. You owe them your body, your sex, your love.’
Writing this is my expression of bundling my sexual little womxn up into my arms and telling her that she never owed anyone anything. That she wasn’t doing anything wrong. That her love of flirting is a pure, and a beautiful form of moving her life force energy.
I am telling her right now that she always has and always will have the right to change her mind.
That every single other womxn has the right to change their mind too.
That our bodies are not properties.
That our actions are not contracts. ONLY our words. Only CONSENT. Always CHECKED IN ON.
I have come to the understanding that each menstruation is a beautifully painful opportunity to shed the trauma my younger self endured. To heal her wounds. To deprogram the narrative that a womxn owes everything. When in fact, she owes nothing.