Empowerment

I did not grow up in the age of “girl power.” While I was encouraged to do my best in school and found most subjects fairly easy, girls were encouraged to be polite (I excelled), pretty (I failed) and fit in (I failed miserably).

I started high school to the strains of “I am Woman, hear me roar,” but somehow, I didn’t get the memo.

It started in elementary school. I was sent to school in the belief that 1) I would learn to read, and 2) I would make friends.

For the first half of my first year, I waited to learn to read. We recited the alphabet daily, were drilled on phonics and sight words and learned to write them in cursive, but as far as I was concerned, we weren’t reading. Until Christmas, we had no readers. When we finally received them, the stories fell into the category of stupid. I made up better stories, and I was six.

As for friends, I was clueless. I decided to play with the girl who sat in front of me in class, mainly because I knew her name (Debbie). That didn’t last. She had a pushy friend who said Debbie was her friend, and I couldn’t play with them. I learned about crossed games (“You can’t play; the game is crossed.”), playing tag with girls who could run faster than I could, and being told I thought I was a big shot because I usually knew the answers in class. I was told this by those who didn’t.

When I came home in tears because I had no friends, my mother would tell me I didn’t need friends like that. If I mentioned some mean retort I’d thought of saying back to the girls, she would tell me not to stoop to their level.

“Just think how you would feel if someone said that to you.”

But… someone did.

Years of being told that taught me to choke on standing up for myself. I learned enough empathy to spirit away others who were being bullied. I couldn’t stand up to the bullies, but I was friends with their victims until they got tired of me.

People often thought I was a push-over. They were wrong. I simply learned to be passive-aggressive, and wander off. Unfortunately, my lack of ability to stand up to people, and the ingrained admonishment to “be nice” caused me to date several people I didn’t want to date because I didn’t know how to turn them down without hurting their feelings. Fortunately, I knew how to be boring enough to help them decide they didn’t want to date me. They had no worries about hurting feelings.

I remember a nun in seventh grade telling us that people were meant to either get married or go into the religious life. The only reason to remain single was to care for aging parents. Anyone who stayed single for any other reason was selfish. At that, I raised my hand.

“Sister, what if no one ever asks you to marry them?”

My question was met with chuckles by my classmates. I took that to mean that they also understood that it was highly unlikely that anyone would ever ask me. And there was no way I was ever going to be a nun, no matter what.

“Sit down,” she said, as if it were inconceiveable that any woman anywhere could fail to be asked.

The women I see today are so much more confident than I ever was. I see that in teenagers as well.

I’ve attended several bat mitzvahs in my husband’s family, and I’m always amazed at the poise and style of the girl in question and her friends. Of course, they have the advantage of public school, where they are allowed to fraternize with boys, as we were not in my Catholic schools, so they have male friends as well as female ones, and are at ease with all of them.

When I think of myself at 13, I remember a pudgy tomboy who was awkward in every situation that didn’t involve having a guitar in my hands and singing. At 13 I was still very much a child, unlike my nieces and my husband’s cousins. I wouldn’t have fit into the kinds of dresses they wore, much less been able to walk in the heels or dance in said clothes.

Teens and college women are very nonchalant compared to who I was at those ages. I recall several times having people approach me when I was in my first year at Penn State and asking if I’d gone to Catholic school. When I said I had, the response was, “I thought so,” and the stranger with the strange question would walk away.

I don’t to this day understand what that question was about. I thought I was fairly cool in my layered hair, earth shoes, corduroy trousers and blazer over an Oxford shirt. I’d still dress that way, but they don’t make earth shoes like that anymore.

My colleagues at work seem to take all sorts of social situations in stride that I still struggle with. When I listen to them talk about dating, if they’re single, I think I never would have gotten away with talking to guys the way they do. If I’d even looked like I was going to give an ultimatum or make a demand, the guys who dated me would have taken me home, leaving me with no expectation of a call. Ever.

I wonder how people get that way. I was always made to feel that I didn’t have the right to be like other people; I was the outsider.

While I’ve improved with age, I still hate confrontations. I can usually avoid unpleasant situations. And there is something empowering about being happy keeping one’s own company. As the saying goes, “I live in my own little world, but it’s all right: they know me here.”