She has not changed, but evaporated, disappeared completely, yet you have no eyes to see it. A poem says, “I stepped out onto the balcony of myself,” and there she cries without stopping.
Dear woman,
Before the year closes with fireworks, raised toasts, and ready-made wishes you will receive without anything of substance in them, I am addressing you with a few questions no one asks you. No one asks them, not because they are unimportant, but because they are difficult. Because they require you to stop and turn toward yourself. Because they ask for the truth, not the deception you have made a way of life by not recognizing that “other” within you who has taken up all the space and pushed you out onto the balcony.
How are you, first of all?
How are you in that space where you are useful to everyone except yourself?
How many times has your soul taken the shape of a question mark, while your body has continued to rise vertically every morning? You went to work, fulfilled obligations, were a mother, a daughter, a partner, a professional, a friend, and no one stopped to ask whether you were truly managing?
Is anyone asking you how you’re managing?
This question is not asked, because a woman is assumed to always know how to manage?
I know, only your hunched soul knows this, the one no one sees because it does not make a cracking sound each time it breaks. The one that grows tired in silence.
Has anyone ever asked you how many times you were forced to remain silent to preserve “peace”?
Because you felt that every word of yours would seem like rubble that sweeps everything away. And you chose to ask yourself: should I speak or should I remain silent?
And almost always, you remained silent.
How many times have you lowered your voice so they wouldn’t call you “argumentative,” “emotional,” “difficult”?
Your honesty gets you labelled a “drama queen,” while your patience is expected, like an obligation.
How many dreams have you postponed “for later”?
Because the children were more urgent.
Because the family was more urgent.
Because work was more urgent.
Because everything was more urgent than you.
But who noticed your invisible exhaustion?
The work that doesn’t appear anywhere in contracts.
The care that is unpaid.
The patience you inherited from the “old school.”
Who ever asked you: are you tired?
What are you losing on this long journey of fulfilling expectations?
Which version of yourself have you become, and which version did you abandon along the way?
How many truths do you swallow every day so as not to hurt others’ egos?
How many times have you shrunk yourself so that another could feel more important?
And your body, why don’t you care for it the way it deserves?
Do you know that the body is the most honest mirror of your inner world?
The pains you push aside, the fatigue you ignore, the weight you carry, they all speak of things you did not have time to express in words.
Why don’t you speak?
Why don’t you complain?
Because you were taught that a woman who complains is ungrateful, because she has everything and is never satisfied?
Because some think that to eat and drink means to be fulfilled?
When was the last time you felt free inside your own skin?
Out of the 365 days of the year, how many days were truly yours?
Did anyone ask you whether you are happy?
Or is it enough that everything around you doesn’t collapse for it to seem like it’s working?
Do you feel alive, or are you just breathing?
This end of year, I am not wishing you patience.
I am not wishing you sacrifice.
Nor will I tell you “stay strong,” because you have been strong for far too long.
I wish you the courage to write the honest answers to these questions in a notebook. To read them. To accept them. And if necessary, to burn them. Then to begin again.
Write new questions, but this time on the mirror with the fiery lipstick that can’t wait to be applied along your lips:
Who am I?
What do I truly want?
How can I gain the things I want?
Because no one will gift them to you.
But you also do not need to ask permission to claim the things that naturally belong to you, like the air you breathe.
It is time to return to yourself.
I truly hope you find yourself again, because you have been missed for a long time by that wonderful person you are and whom you see from afar. This “other” that runs your life must be discarded. Take the reins of your life in your hands and “run girl, run.”
I wish you a year in which you will not diminish under burdens you take on without anyone asking you to.
I wish you to go out, to socialize, to take up space in the world, where you belong.
I wish you to shine as only you know how, regardless of circumstances, because everything passes and everything has a solution.
And yes, it is in your hands. It is enough to put on the right heels and you can conquer the world, says Merlin.
