I Lost Myself Trying to Be Someone's Type.

Valmira Dubova

5 hours ago

7 min read

This is a short story of immense pain that later on turns to realization.

Sometimes our greatest realizations come from pain. — myselftotle

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others,” said the pigs in Animal Farm.

These kinds of pigs, literally and metaphorically, are found everywhere. And if not everywhere, then I keep meeting them at least somewhere.

I.

We have been deluded to accept that we have gone past issues like racism or discrimination based on gender since we’ve been talking about these issues for ages, and somehow they are outdated by now and too much time has passed. “We should just move past that.” Ughhh. But when we watch the news, we see the most horrendous news ever. In this world, in this postmodern world, there are still women who have no rights. Maybe this article will not reach them, and I am not one of those women… but this is luck. And people, anywhere, anytime, might run out of luck. Therefore, it is important to say this. We haven’t gone past this particular issue.

But feminism is no longer treated as something new or necessary. Instead, it is often brushed off and ridiculed, as if the issues it speaks about have already been resolved.

“This feminism bullshit is cringe and embarrassing, advocated by women who can’t land a good man, because let’s be honest here, between me and you. They just aren’t hot enough, smart enough, cool enough. And equal rights? We have them, all right, everybody? Take a pill… chill.”

Chill?!

We’re in the middle of a battlefield, but we are distracted and looking the other way when the oppressor is right in front of us. Yes, oppressor. It is that serious. And the battlefield is not even a metaphor. Women die because of having no rights. Sorry for ruining it for you. And those women are part of a thousand, you and me included.

How did I come up with this from a mere situationship?

I am writing this from the comfort of my home, curled up in a blanket, and it feels like I take all this for granted because I miss a guy who half-chose me and I wallow when he follows other women. But while being in this pain, I had this spark of thought. What if I had no choice? What if I didn’t have the comfort of crying in my room? I had to make myself see. Not to make my experiences feel unimportant, but to zoom out a bit. And by zooming out, I saw all this.

You see.

Every calamity that happens to the world, to women… it happens twice.

Cruella De Vil said: “More good women have been lost to marriage than to war, famine, disease, and disaster.” Men could die from all of these, yes, but women are lost to marriage too. And we go into a relationship unprepared. And they come to us as a Trojan horse.

What’s worse than a relationship, you may say? A situationship. Everybody shut up. The war veteran is speaking here.

A situationship. Where you lose yourself as if you were a piece of trash. If we were to physically live the situationship the way we do spiritually, it’d be like someone getting you, using you and throwing you in the trash. And, might I add, if someone else found you in the trash can, they would steal your jewelry and clothes, leaving you for dead… twice.

II.

And before I get a roll of eyes, I have been (probably still am) sweet and naïve, unintentionally. I had the mindset of how a relationship could be if our egos and hearts weren’t sick from lust and jealousy, and we all ate cotton candy for breakfast and braided each other’s hair. Learned all this in the school of rom-com movies.

Later on, I have evolved into learning about the dynamic between women and men, learning the dating tricks, by book and by practice. I have tried laughing, joking, crying, dressing, undressing, sucking, kissing, but they all somehow failed. They failed because their inability to choose me fully is not dependent on me.

So, I have the rights by the heartbroken community to write whatever I want and say whatever I want. I am a veteran of love. Heartbroken. Soul-shattered. Sleep-deprived (not anymore).

And to me this is a real fight. The deep sadness I experienced was real to the point that all I could do some days was survive till the next one.

When we hear such stories of the heartbroken and soul-shattered, we feel pity for the other person. But that wouldn’t be you, right? We refuse to be victims. Because being a victim requires us to accept the fact that we couldn’t do something about it. And maybe we still can’t.

So, thinking that this search for love or whatever that is, is a battlefield doesn’t make me paranoid, at all.

Why would such a fleeting encounter, so random, leave a huge mark and void in me?

Because I was thrown in that trash can. And I made it out alive. At first, I’d say I made out of that trash can unfortunately, wishing I didn’t. But writing this gives me a glimmer of hope.

Because I am a thousand women, maybe more. Because I come from a country that was in a war. A country that leaks incredible pain. And I am the daughter, the sister, the wife that was in absolute fear because of the war. I can say that we’re in a better place now, which we are, but I can’t escape who I represent.

And how can I be okay with a woman who has such deep wounds from life being wounded again and again?

Thus, a fleeting encounter, something that is small and harmless to the world, leaves an annihilation pain in me.

No matter how much I convince myself that I took part in it. That I had no boundaries, I was “too nice,” I gave myself away, I was in denial. And I was not like that, I didn’t wake up one day and choose to pick a guy and have no boundaries. This is mutual. Why do I have to justify his actions but not mine?

And this, being responsible, actually helps me. It puts me in the driver’s seat for a second. Because it is less painful, less humiliating than admitting that I simply was a victim.

And because I grew up with the belief that you shouldn’t victimize yourself, or if somehow someone doesn’t love you, it’s your fault, you lack something, and if you had that, then maybe, maybe you wouldn’t be dumped… I refused to believe that I was truly a victim. And admitting this is more painful than deluding yourself that you were part of the relationship.

And this is where I began to think about the way we see ourselves as women, and how much of that is connected to the way men see us.

This deeply patriarchal society mocks women who use the term patriarchy. And I was part of that mockery too. I used the term “ah, look at the feminist” too. And when a man asked me if I was a feminist, I said, “Yes, but I’m not like THOSE feminists.”

Which feminists was I talking about? Those that don’t care about a man’s validation. But I cared, so I had to be agreeable. In fact, I was conspiring against myself at the end of the day.

I used to distance myself from those women because I wanted men to see me differently. I wanted their approval, and I thought that being unlike those feminists would make me more agreeable, more desirable, easier to choose.

I am glad I used to think that way because it made me realize how feminism is ridiculed and made to look like less, even though the issues it addresses have not disappeared.

And this mockery helps the chauvinist men we deal with. And now, as women, we quiet down. It’s scary and woo woo to say this. But sometimes it feels like you exchange something spiritual, profound with them.

Your whole way of seeing and experiencing life is through them. You look for how they would perceive it. It breaks you in half and you lose your sense of self. Somehow it feels like during sleep, your projection about the world was magically exchanged.

The Arc

I think Carl Jung is rolling in his grave because I’m trying to analyze these non-complex human beings. Probably deep down there is this belief that somehow they were superior to me. When in reality they are pussies.

This might be the biggest realization around dating during all this time I write. The issue is that most, the majority of men are simply, well… hoes.

And I was so deep in my pain and thinking what they are thinking or doing that I didn’t see this. Susan Piver in her book Healing from a Broken Heart says something profound. “Drop the story, feel the emotions.” I was so sad telling myself stories about how they are mocking me, throwing me… blah blah. And nothing was happening at the moment.

The story, if I was different, if I had acted differently, I’m like this but he likes something else… I told myself many stories and I couldn’t see the reality for what it was. That these men are simply hoes. Thanks Carl Jung.

In Animal Farm, pigs were in lead. But we, as readers, could see how ridiculous the situation was. Therefore, it is important to question things we know about the world.

It is important to keep talking about something even after a time has passed. Just because it has been around for a long time, when it hasn’t been resolved, it hasn’t.

In a thousand women, one could be in a forced marriage, one in an unhappy one, one studying, one not able to go to school, one in a situationship, one maybe happy, one abused, one crying… and the difference could be that one of them is 995 and me 996.

Our experiences are not equal, and I am not saying that they are. But I have come to realize that my experience, however small it might seem to someone else, has made me think about the experiences of women beyond myself.

I was so busy wondering why I wasn't chosen, what I could have done differently, and how I could have been more desirable that I forgot to question why I had learned to measure myself that way in the first place.

And perhaps that is what being one of a thousand women means to me now. Recognizing that I am not alone in the ways I have been hurt, in the expectations I have internalized, or in the things I am still learning to question.

But after all of this, I still love being a woman. I am one of a thousand women. And I am still learning to see myself as one of them.