Too Damn Nieve to Give a Damn

In my Women of Color class we've been reading Arranged Marriage stories. They're a series of tales about different Indian women and thier empowering moments. The tales have bittersweet endings to them, usually after finding that they cannot rely on men or that their own families or husbands are destroying them as opposed to loving them as they should.

It's a matter of culture.

This is not the only book along those lines we're going to read this semester. We're taking a look at Their Eyes Were Watching God, which I remember absolutely hating in high school. We're also taking a look at The Joy Luck Club which I know is pretty sad and How the Garcia Girls Lost Thier Accents, which though I'm aware that it's bittersweet in parts, I am looking forward to it becuase I love Julia Alvarez.

Still the major theme is empowerment through sad or bad times. Depressing stories basically. And a certain way of looking at men and questioning relations with them. Maybe I wasn't cut out for this class........

I know it's silly to only want to read happy things. I know it's childish to expect there to be Happy Ever Afters and birds tweeting around my head 24/7. I know Disney and etc. builds your hopes up about life, about the way things should be. It's all fiction, not fact.

But, honestly, reality is far too cold and cruel to want to live in it very long. I know there are bad things out there. I acknowledge them strongly. I have seen through movies (based in truth and fiction), the news and reading of events how cruel the world can really be. I have heard through personal accounts of how horrible people can treat one another, what horror that small kids end up seeing. Though I may not have experienced it, no one could call me nieve. I know, not from personal experience, but from connecting, from feeling so strongly what that person must have gone through. Empathy, an almost painful emotion.

So, I can read these books and get through them and try to analyze past the poetic and sad words but I'm still going to have to read The Lorax or Beauty and the Beast or Tweleve Dancing Princesses or East of the Sun and West of the Moon before I go to sleep. Because I don't like nightmares. Because I honestly can't sleep after reading about such depressing things becuase my brain likes to think about everything in my life, analyze every single detail at that time.

At 2 in the morning I can convince myself that I'm worthless, going nowhere and too relient on people who will betray me. Pretty much like any characters I've been reading about. I hate 2 am.

The doubts creep in my mind as I try to take my life and analyze each little bit, each faulty line, like I'm reading something for class or critiquing someone's piece. It's frustrating and I hate it when my brain works overtime making big deals out of nothing and causing more anxiety than what I'm already fighting off.

So I'll stick with my nearly always predicatble set-up love comedies. I'll read Harlequin, because no matter how cheesy they can be, one thing is always certain: There will always be a happy ending. And that's what I truly believe. There is always a happy ending out there.......it's just that there seems to be a hell of a lot of strife in the world, getting in the way of that happiness.

Maybe I am nieve. Maybe I'm too simple.

I do like challenging works. I love Fahrenheit 451 and A Raisin in the Sun. The thing is....with those two, there's an uncertain ending but there is one thing left to those characters: hope. There is hope seeping out of the pages.

I think we could all use a little more hope.

But there is need to cheesy work out there. There is need for a happy ending, for laughter and true love. Nothing is as perfect as it can seem in some stories, but I think you have to take that into account.

Sure, nothing's going to be as great as the ending of a Disney movie. But, there can still be happiness. There can still be love. There can still be finding some kind of contentment out there. I don't care if I'm too simple that I'm amused by commercial lit like Meg Cabot, Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling, and Mary Janice Davidson. I don't care if I detest war movies or need to see most chick flicks that come out. I don't care if people tell me that I don't know what I'm talking about or the divorce rate is to high or that there is too much shit going on in the world. I don't care if I don't ever watch the news again.

I cannot believe that the world is doomed to sadness. I cannot beleive that The Boy will try to control me or beat me like men have done for centuries. I cannot believe that my family will betray me for what they want out of life. I know I'm way too dependent on The Boy, Doodle, my friends here, my parents. But that's who I am....I'm a very dependent personality. But it's not like this is holding me back. Relying on them is what keeps me going, what makes me strong. I take my strength from that support.

And I see no reason why I should need to drop everything in my life to be empowered. I am simply empowered by the people around me. I don't need to go it alone, Zora; Chitra; Louise......






And this was a really long rant about nothing. Well....at least this won't come out in the middle of class........