Being both sick and feverish and in manic mode is not pleasant. I did get a haircut. The conversation ended up with me encouraging the hairdresser to start talking to her daughter about sex earlier rather than later, because it’s better for the information to be coming from you…I’m not really sure how we got there. The details are kind of foggy. But! Haircut, no tears, success.
I wrote half my journal before I went to get the haircut, and half after. “Get a haircut” kept coming up in the writing and I finally just broke off and got it done. When I got back the thoughts were a lot more settled. For some reason what came up was a rant about this writing book I’d tracked down at the library because it sounded interesting. Then I read this:
Motherhood is a creation. It is the beginning of immortality. Perhaps this is one of the reasons women are less inclined toward philandering [and, or so it is implied by the author, creating stories] than men.
The greatest injustice imposed upon a mother is when her grown up children, out of sheer love and consideration, keep their troubles from her. They make her feel unimportant.
As you might imagine, I stopped reading about this point.
…
This is so sexist that I’ll grieve every time I [try to read this book]. How is this person going to tell me how to write a story when he doesn’t think I’m fully human? what stories can he even tell? Having birthed a child did not satisfy my need to create. It slowed me down, granted–and if [a lack of need to create] is how you wanted to read the situation, you could. But I stopped being fully human for a while there, because it took everything I had to deal with my child. I was carefully trained to turn my essential nature off. That is not the same a having satisfied the need to create. That was being exhausted and brainwashed into compliance.
Asshole.
…
I am not a magic breeding machine who is “satisfied” by my daughter’s mere existence and her desire to have her every whim be my command. There’s nothing essentially holy or uplifting about it, no more so than some guy leaving behind an unwanted child after a one-night stand. Or do guys get some special glow after they’ve impregnated someone? Someone, tell me, was your need to create satisfied? Were you like, “I was going to be a world-famous novelist, but now…? I’m good. Someone else take my place at the table.”
I thought not. Screw that guy; I’m not even going to mention the name of the book.
If you liked the journal today, please check out my historical crime novellas in the Smoke series—How Smoke Got out of the Chimneys is the first one.
[Shakes fist at the author of that book.]