The Princess Myth
I just read this article about the princess myth and if it’s harmful to little girls.
Though I liked pink for a while when I was a child and liked to draw princesses too, I’ve never identified with princesses and never wanted to be a dumb, blonde celebrity. My sister and I never played princesses, we were having shipwrecks and went exploring (those were our favorite games). For years I thought I was a tomboy, but I’ve realized that I simply wasn’t an average girl, just a girl, period. And yes, I think the Princess Myth can be harmful to girls, just as anything else can. It can teach them to be passive victims and I really hate that. On the other hand, as someone’s pointed out, if done the right way, I suppose this myth can be harmless. After all, nowadays there are warrior princesses too.
Last summer I saw a group of children playing. Not surprisingly the boys were cowboys and the girls were – prey? Squaws? In any case, the boys, who were ‘armed’ chased the girls, who were shrieking and conforming to all the myths about the helpless little female. It was really hard for me to keep quiet (sometimes I can’t, as when I see children doing something potentially dangerous), but I did. They’re not my kids and I’m sure the mothers would have objected to me trying to educate their children.
Grr. Oh, well, maybe those girls will eventually grow up to be sensible human beings too, and if not, well, it’s not surprising. Sigh. I’m many things, one of them being a pessismist.
There’s snow in Sweden? Really? Wow, I never knew that.
Monday this week was absolutely horrible for me. (Stop reading here, if you like, major rant ahead.)
I woke up at 6 and couldn’t go back to sleep. I should have been able to sleep until ten but of course I couldn’t. There was this exam I had to go to in another town. To get there I had to go by train and change trains in the middle. Well, going there was ok, but since I always try to be such a good girl, I decided to take the last train back, one that left forty minutes after the exam ended (not that we have to stay that long if we’re already finished).
Guess what? I didn’t need to stay the whole time, I was done after an hour and a half. To save money I had bought a ticket that I couldn’t rebook. So when I got to the station, I asked if I could anyway and a real prat of a rail employee told me I could always buy a new ticket, without even looking at me.
Then I waited for nearly four hours, the last hour or so for a train that was delayed and the time of arrival kept getting updated, mainly online (I don’t have one of those phones so I had to keep calling home to my sister). Getting on a train that was late made me miss the connecting train, and the one after that because hey, holding a train for about a whole minute is way too much trouble for them, apparently.
Then there was the cold. Did I mention the cold? I was so cold I almost broke my teeth. Couldn’t control my jaws. It was so cold, my sister and my mom could hear it in my voice over the phone.
Where was I? Right. Missing my connecting train, meant going on a long detour to the coast, where we were supposed to rebook our tickets, because the railway people had forgotten that here in Sweden we get snow every year. This being such a tropical paradise, of course that’s a natural mistake. NOT!
Someone must have complained, because later the guy came on the loudspeaker sounding a lot more sympathetic, saying we needn’t bother about the rebooking, and just go on to the connecting train. (It might have had something to do with the fact that it was now close to 10 pm and customer service closed at 8 pm, but who knows?) All this was about half an hour after I should have been home.
So I got on the last train, without a valid ticket, but apparently someone had informed our conductor (or train host as they’re called now, apparently) that there would be victims of the snow delay on her train, so she basically just checked I had some kind of ticket and that was it. Back again around 11.30 pm. Then a lovely brisk walk in the snow, on slippery streets to get home to a very late dinner.
On the bright side, I saw a very cute dog (a puli?) at one of the stations and a very cute and charming little girl of about two, and I won’t have to study any more this year. It would be even better if I pass, but I won’t find out for at least three weeks so I’ll just focus on getting through the days without studying and worrying (about the exam anyway).
I’ve been so tired today I haven’t felt up to doing any of the things I looked forward to doing, when I was studying every evening. I promised myself I’d read, write, translate, watch tv, listen to music… Now I almost (not quite) miss the studying, because it was something to do. I can always read, write (and so on) some other time.Which means I don’t do it. I just sit, trying to keep warm. Did I mention the cold? I mean the cold inside the house, not outside. It’s freezing in here. Oh, and the washing machine is probably broken, and we can’t afford to buy a new one. Hello, the joys of learning to hand wash, like – well, a hundred years ago, or sixty.
Just a little reminder. The things I said in my last whiny post still go. It’s just become a tiny bit easier to think about it.
Don’t worry, this will probably take care of my need for whining until, at the very least, next year. LOL.
I get so tired…
Sometimes I get so tired of people. I keep looking for new friends online or offline and many times (fortunately not always – you guys know who you are) the ones who share my interests are the worst. When I go to forums, communities, groups, message boards etc, I seem to run into threads that give me a headache. Self-appointed experts are telling others off for allegedly doing something wrong or not doing something they’re supposed to do and so on. Why can’t we just stick together? Why do we have to stab each other in the back? By ‘we’, naturally I mean ‘they’. š Sigh. I seem to have hit a really bad patch right now.
In shock
I’m devastated. Yesterday I had really bad news, twice over and I’m still in shock. Can’t tell you too much about it, and I still don’t know the full circumstances in one case and won’t know for a while yet, the full consequences of the second. Lately I’d been managing to stay cheerful, but now I’ve just fallen apart. I don’t know why we always have such bad luck.
Life goes on long after the thrill of living is gone
My life is over. No, I’m not dead or even dying, at least not any more than we, all of us, are from the time we’re born. In fact, using some definition of ‘life’ I might be around for a very long time more. Unfortunately, in my family, we tend to have very long ‘lives’.
What I mean is, any hope I ever had of deriving any pleasure from life is gone. I should have seen it sooner, really. Like the smart little frog, I should have seen where this was going and given up and drowned. The stupid frog wins, someone saves him. No one’s going to save me and frankly, I wouldn’t want anyone else to save me. If I can’t save myself, I don’t want to be saved. And I can’t. So, like I said. It’s over.
You might ask what’s changed since last night. Well, in a way, a lot of things have changed. It seems I will probably be stuck in this hell hole where I ‘live’ for – well, for as long as I ‘live’. My one chance of getting out of here just vanished. I can’t tell you exactly what happened, because it’s still too painful. I don’t even know the full circumstances yet. Chances are, I won’t want to know.
Secondly, I had some other bad news. I can’t tell you what that is either. You probably wouldn’t understand, but it was the one thing I still had left to hope for, other than getting out of here.
It’s time I face the facts. I’ll never succeed in anything I try. I should have known sooner. I’ve been failing for more years than I like to remember. The truth is, I’ve never succeeded at anything after I left school.
Time to give up. Time to stop trying. Why should I set myself up for disappointment, when it’s clear that nothing is ever going to work out? Each time I allow myself to hope, those hopes are crushed, sooner or later.
This time I should be smart and stop. Stop trying, stop hoping, stop hurting. Except that last one won’t be possible. When I look at others around me the inevitable comparisons are going to show up. Why is she such a success when I’m not?
Of course, I only have myself to blame. I was born this way. Set up for failure from the time I was born. I’ve tried as hard as I’ve been able to try. As hard as someone like me is capable of. What a cruel joke.
I read somewhere that we, humanity, Earth, the universe, might just be one big simulation, created by some beings far more powerful than we are. In that case, i can only conclude that they did it out of spite. Doesn’t everything seem like one big cruel, sadistic joke? To me it does.
So this is it. TIme to get smart. Time to finally learn from my life and take the consequences. Maybe it will hurt a little less if I stop trying.
What happened?
Today the sun was shining and it was actually quite warm and not windy at all. Very nice in fact. I hurried out so I wouldn’t miss the sunshine. My mom and I went shopping (groceries, nothing more fun).
That’s when I was hit with depression. By staying indoors for quite a while (except for bringing in the mail, apples etc or hanging the laundry) I’d sort of been in denial. Partially shut myself down. Now it all came back to me. What a pathetic failure I am. What a loser.
At the store we ran into a woman my mom knew from way back. I remember her kids. It was like looking back in time. There he was, that kid (who wasn’t my friend, but I knew him – he lived in our neighbourhood). Except he’s not six years old anymore, with one of those toothless smiles, six-year-olds have. It was the guy’s son. And according to the grandmother there are more grandkids, and she and this boy were going to get them.
Great. This guy, who quite honestly is younger than me, has more than one kid now. Then look at me. Living with my mom. Still struggling to get a degree and later, hopefully, a job. No boyfriend, no kids. Help!
I know many other people are a lot worse off, so I’m ashamed to whine like this, but I just hate myself for failing this badly. The worst part is I’ve never known what to do or rather how to do it, obviously, or I’d have done it years ago. (Close your eyes, take a deep breath. If you can’t even calm down, how are you ever going to straighten out this mess you’ve made of your life?) There. One thing at a time. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? A pity it isn’t, not really.
Trolleys andĀ trolls
Today, we went to the store to do our weekly shopping. The car isn’t working so we had to pull our little shopping trolleys along. It might not look very cool, but it must be good for the environment and it saves us a lot of money.
The trouble is, wherever we go, there are grumpy old women telling us we’re in the way. Yeah. We’re in the way. Not them with their canes, crutches and walkers. There are also a couple of moms with young children and that troubles me too. I really, really want a baby so seeing others with babies and big bellies upsets me a lot.
From now on, we’re considering doing our shopping at ten in the evening. That’s when we run into a lot of 20- and 30-something singles without kids. For some reason they don’t bother us and we don’t seem to bother them.
So disappointed…
I can’t help being disappointed. Today I saw for myself for the first time what my LiveJournal looks to people who are not logged in – ie the majority of my friends. Maybe I’m being unreasonable, but I deliberatey chose a ‘basic’ account, so I could have a nice looking journal, without many of the features the paid accounts get. And now they’ve found a way to cheat us twice over. We get the basic features but we still have to endure the ads.
I just hate ads on a site. Usually anyway. I know of a few sites where first of all the ads are so unobtrusive they don’t offend me and I don’t even notice them unless I go look for them, secondly, the ads are usually to the point. I’ll find merchandise and services that I’m interested in. But in general, ads are an eyesore. And now LJ has joined the ranks of those moneygrabbers. Sorry, but that’s how I feel. If LJ hadn’t been such a nice community I’d leave, but from now on, I don’t think I’ll blog there anymore, I’ll just post a link to my real blog/homepage. Anyone interested in my posts will have to click a link and leave the site.
Furiousā¦
I’m furious. Today, my sister went to the job center, and the guy there had the nerve to suggest that she sell her part of our little house. Wtf? Surely that’s not part of his job description. Come to think of it, what is part of his job description, since he obviously can’t help my sister get a job. All those people do is swing the whip for the government. Here in Sweden, only 1-2 % of all jobs come through an employment agency/job center. The rest people have to get for themselves, if they have connections. Needless to say, my family don’t have any connections.
The second thing he said that caused me to fly into a redhot rage was a very personal comment about our mother. She’s retired, but not for health reasons. It’s just that most people here are forced to retire at a certain age (in their 60’s). If she insisted on continuing working, she’d miss out on all her work experience and get paid like a newbie on the work market. He said something like ‘in a couple of years time you’ll have to accept that she’ll get increasingly dependent on you (which is another reason it’s a great idea for you to apply for jobs far away from her) and confused, and won’t be able to deal with things on her own.
I’d like to say, for the record, that in my family, people don’t get that way until they’re somewhere between ninety and a hundred, so he’ll be a doddering old fool a long time before my mom will be, and secondly, again, in what way is personal comments about people’s family members part of his job description?
If I’d been the one to meet this old guy, I don’t think I would have been able to keep quiet. The weird thing is my sister just got sad, not angry, but then again, I guess that’s just me. I get angry first, then sad.
And, by the way, I’m still angry and still thinking of ways to report this creep to someone, but I guess nothing will come of it. I’ll just have to focus on staying calm. Getting this upset won’t get me anywhere.