Tied together with a smile

I am passive-aggressive. I've probably known this for a while but didn't have the specific word or definition to apply until last semester. In my small group communication class, a group did a presentation on conflict management styles: assertive, passive, aggressive, and passive-aggressive. They said that passive-aggressive is the least healthy. I was like, 'hey...it's not the worst thing I could be.' In another class we were taking about conflict and how we respond to it, as a part of a whole personality test deal. Basically, my personality type will withdraw or give in when faced with conflict. In that class, she also gave us a list of responses to conflict, like attacking the other person, freezing them out, etc. The one that resonated the most with me was called something like 'Vengeance is Mine.' Basically, it means that I try to subtly 'punish' someone when I'm mad at them. The silent treatment is sometimes too obvious, so I still talk to and acknowledge someone I'm mad at, just in the least enthusiastic manner possible. They have really exciting news, I will reply with a 'that's great' and go back to what I was doing. I'm texting someone I'm upset with, they get short, curt answers with a period at the end. One word with a period...that is definitely the best way to communicate hurt feelings. Yes, I am so intelligent.

The thing is...I usually know I'm doing it too. It is a conscious decision to not be excited, to give curt answers over text or in person. Sometimes it's just if I've been hurt by someone and don't want to be again so I try to keep from investing in them, but sometimes I'm just mad and don't know how to handle conflict. Even when I'm being ridiculous, my head is yelling at me that I'm being stupid and I should apologize for being manipulative and we should talk about what's bothering me because it's obviously important. But the more scared part of me is usually more influential and it keeps me from saying anything. And even when I do realize my instincts and cut them off, I still don't say anything about whatever's bothering me. I just ignore it, pretend there's no problem, pretend I'm not still mad after 9. Nope, I'm doing just fine. My life is great, just busy with homework. It's so easy to hide everything and just say I'm doing good, my life is good, everything is good.

Communicating and conflict are not my greatest skills. Confronting someone involves mental planning, of what I'm going to say so that it comes out right and analyzing whether this really is important enough to say something and what the possible consequences. But then actually talking to someone and they immediately get defensive and I feel attacked and I am done with that conversation. I give in, you win, I am not talking about this any more. You keep thinking everything's fine and I'll just hold onto this bitterness that only comes out when I'm lonely. It's like my other post, satan knows what to use to get me. He knows my insecurities and fears as well as I do and he uses them against me in the worst way.

No matter how much better I like to think I'm doing, it's still the same old things over and over. I tell myself positive things, I try to handle things...but it's like it never really sinks in and I never really believe it. My head knows that I'm probably not always annoying, that I'm not ugly, that people do want to be friends with me...but the same messages keep coming back and hitting me in the face and they're impossible to get rid of. I know in my head that I've grown and changed a lot, especially in the past year, but then why do I still struggle with the exact same issues? Like the Relient K song, I struggle with forward motion. I struggle with really moving on, with being transformed, with relying on God and His strength. Ugh. Life just gets more complicated. I wish it didn't. I wish that one day I would have everything figured out, that I'd be at peace with who God made me to be, with how I look and act and think. I wish satan didn't have such a hold on me, that he didn't keep me so paralyzed with my own fears and insecurities. I wish that life would work how I wanted it to. That would definitely be awesome.

Vaya con Dios.

When every girl can see her beauty, we will be an army.

You may know that I'm in an Anthropology of Gender class this semester. I don't remember if I've written anything about it yet or not. Anyways, today I started reading our last book for the semester, called The Beauty Myth. It talks about how American society keeps women obsessed with their looks to keep them powerless...at least that's what I understand it to say. There are a lot of good things in it...a lot of really true things. It talks about work - that women, historically and statistically, work twice as hard as men. In a lot of tribal societies, women do 4/5 of the work. Here and now, women are often better and harder workers too. We also tend to have longer work weeks and more than half of married, working women are still fully responsible for any and all household chores and whatnot. Another chapter was talking about women's magazines and that it's advertisers that control what goes in them. Magazines are dependent on the revenue from ads so writing about how we don't need to diet, how we don't need to dye out gray hair or use make-up to hide everything we think is imperfect isn't going to happen. The advertisers marketing these products need women to be dependent on them. Thy need us to think that we need make-up, that we need unhealthy crash diets, and that we need to stay looking young at all costs.

Earlier today, the book was making me really angry. But now...I just feel completely and utterly powerless. A lot of gender related things are really deep rooted in our culture. So although someone may say they're not sexist, they probably are. I get upset sometimes at people tone of voice, nuances and implications in what they say, and throwaway comments, like" oh, that's just how boys are," because they reveal our true, deep cultural beliefs about men and women. The book was talking about something that we just can't quite put our finger on, it's too deep beneath the surface and influences so subtly that we don't really see it. Maybe I'm just depressed now because I'm tired. That's definitely a factor...but something this deeply rooted and this destructive feels like it can't be changed. Or change is too slow to help the junior high and high school girls that I know now. Girls I know who believe that they're ugly and that if they have sex with a boy then he'll love her, girls who have had had eating disorders, girls who say that they can't stand to hang around with other girls...so many things, so many problems.

I...don't have any solutions, any ideas. I know I should say something about how God is always working and God is sovereign, but I don't feel like He is. hy have women and the oppression of women seemed to be on His 'back burner' for all of human history? How is David a 'man after God's own heart' when he had multiple wives and stole another man's wife? How is Solomon the wisest man ever when he had multiple hundreds of concubines? The book Captivating talks about satan having a 'special hatred' for women, for targeting women specifically throughout history. But why, God? Why women? I'm still not sure of my views on women in ministry and whatnot, but why allow the church to be patriarchal and oppressive throughout its history? Why has the church been used as a force to keep women in their 'proper place,' teaching us that we're intrinsically less valuable, less intelligent, less able to lead? I could keep writing, but then it'd probably never end. I'm going to read Harry Potter instead. She writes excellent female characters.

Vaya con Dios.