Myths of womanhood

I’ve been falling apart over the last few weeks. Recently, at a place where I should have been engaged and serious, I started feeling my body parts floating away. I had to spend that whole meeting focusing on someone’s nose so that I can ‘force myself together long enough to get home. Why was I falling apart?

I think I tried to be superwoman. Fun wife, supportive daughter, sister, and friend; a fully hands on mum and house management. Well I think I managed it for a while, but I started falling apart. It started by losing sleep. Getting so tired that the body refuses to sleep, or forgets how to sleep. Then zoning out right left and center… then getting uber forgetful. In one day, I forgot to carry fare, was zoned out all through the days meetings, lost my precious cables (USB, Earphones, Computer charger), lost all the money I had withdrawn from MPESA, then to cap it off, took the wrong matatu home with barely enough fare to find the right matatu home.

Super woman is a myth. We love portraying ourselves in public spaces as women who have everything together. Then we pressure other women around us to be as together as we work so hard to portray. When one woman asks for help from another, its usually leads to some patronizing conversation about organization. IT’S A LIE! ALL OF IT. There is no way one woman, can cook, feed the little ones, make sure the husbands clothes are good enough for work, listen to or chat with the husband, keep the house clean or get a disorganized house-help to get the house clean attempt to make an extra buck to get home in time to pick little one from school, feed him while engaging baby for all the hours gone, make dinner, make sure the kids are clean and fed and still have energy to be a good wife. Yes, so some-how I managed to live in that whirlwind for about 3 months, but it all fell apart royally in the last few weeks. Now lazy help is gone, I unapologetically lock both kids out to give me space to be productive. I am also working on delegating all household duties apart from making dinner to an organized and driven house manager.

Maybe I can try find pieces of myself that floated away and put them back in place.