I’ve Retired from the “Good Girl” Game. I’m an Unapologetic, Difficult Woman
“She was done battling with herself, trying to change who she knew herself to be. She was Done."
She’s a bitch with a conscience who is learning to stop apologizing her sanity away.
Because she used to be an oh-so-apologetic, “sorry for not being a good little girl,” kind of woman. And, sometimes, she still gets a reflexive and self-protective amnesia when the good girl hijacks the inner bad bitch and pulls her through a backdraft of primal fears.
Sometimes, her traumatized and punishment-expecting body reacts to her power with shame, self-sacrifice, and other somatically stored reflexes of subjugation. It’s just that her inner bitch finally woke up out of self-preservation, and she has had more than enough oppression for lifetimes. Because all the bad bitches in her ancestral line finally have a forum for their dissent, and they are as loud as a chorus of Furies.
The truth is also that the good little girl within her is still alive, even as she fights her well-conditioned death through her inevitable growth. She watches in terror as we defend ourselves, speak our truth, or are brave enough to stand up and out in a world that confuses assimilation with success. Because she is learning how to become a good woman, and the world often tells her that’s just not safe.
She swoops in with judgments and shame to rescue us from the risk that non-compliance represents to our actual well-being. In a world that was only just waking up from the oppression of the feminine, and now appears to be deep diving back down into its dark ages. But at her core, in her deepest self beyond her body and its many manifestations of mind, she’s not fucking sorry. She’s not sorry for refusing to take your shit for you, anymore.
She’s not sorry for protecting herself from a world where being a difficult woman means bracing herself, either in 100 subtle movements a day, or one massive explosion of her force, against those who seek to control her through games of violence. Who demand her complacency and inferiority. Who ask, in their varied attempts at control, that she go back to sleep and play small to appease their malignant egos.
She’s not sorry for cutting you out of her life and never looking back, when she sees you are an active part of that world and refuse to take responsibility for your own behavior—regardless of your gender identification. Because she is done playing your scapegoat, either way, or taking responsibility for your chosen downfall.
She’s not sorry for making too much noise, or making waves, big and small. Especially not when you don’t like the waves she’s making. Because she knows the intentions of her pure heart and that all this really means is you’re exactly the one who is not fucking supposed to like them. For your disapproval and condemnation has only become a mark of her victory.
She’s not sorry that your change and growth aren’t easy or comfortable for you. She’s here to deliver the blow of reality to your complacency in the crimes against her humanity, and the humanity of others, too. Because she knows that it takes a loving and courageous woman to speak her truth and hold others accountable in the face of terror.
She’s unapologetically here to start fires within the massive hearts of those who are also tired of being small, acquiescent citizens. Because she’s tired of the unsafe and insane world we are all a part of creating. The one where people with no access to their conscience get to dictate the conditions of our lives and our planet through a reign of terror, both real and imagined.
She’s not sorry because she’s too busy summoning the Furies within her and channeling them into her superpower to help rebalance that world. She doesn’t have time for your judgments or the arguments you make that your privilege isn’t real so that you can keep it. She’s too busy tearing down the walls the world taught her to build between her and her strong bitch of a self, brick by brick, and refuses to acknowledge the ones you want her to resurrect in their downfall.
Yes, she’s a real bitch to your agenda, and no, she’s not fucking sorry about it. Because she’s retired from the “good girl” game. That one where you attempt to belittle her and grind her down with a thousand tiny cuts to her beautiful psyche. The one where you think her body belongs to you. Where consent, which should be logical, is an inconvenience because it makes you think about your fucking actions and judge yourself.
Because she knows that just maybe, you are the one who is supposed to be. She no longer has room to carry your shame for you within her own gorgeous conscience. Because it’s not actually her job to teach you how to be a respectful human being. It’s your responsibility to learn how to become one of your own volition, and she made a vow that she wouldn’t fall prey to that trap ever again.
That she’d rather be called a crazy bitch than let you get away with disrespecting her, anymore.
Because, let’s face it, she tried to be a nice little “good girl” and you just stayed the same. Now, she’d rather be difficult than deal with the true difficulty of enduring your myriad abuses, regardless of whether you choose to become aware of them or not.
Now, she is deeply unapologetic for her inner bitch’s existence and rightful place in this world.
She is learning to be proud that she has the ability and the courage it takes to stand up and step into the good woman she truly is. Which she does, over and over, every time you remind her of it by calling her a “bitch.”
For whether you do so in an outright manner or with your quieter forms of disapproval, she’s starting to enjoy the word as she transcends your small-minded ego."
Janelle Brown
www.elephantjournal.com
