The war within women

A man I was dating once asked me, ‘Why is it always war with you?’ A friend spoke to me this week about her bubbling rage. I watched my mother smash a lot of plates growing up. Another friend whispered about the urge to scream in her husband’s face. I watched a woman on social media scream at her newborn baby who wouldn’t stop crying. I read about a woman who was so angry she couldn’t stop crying. Everywhere I turn there are angry women who whisper their rage to friends, chat about it on anonymous forums, or scream into a pillow in the black heart of the night. Which is to say, everywhere I turn there are angry women desperately trying to hide their fury from the world.

It might be the 21^st century but it is not becoming for a lady to be angry. It’s as unacceptable now as it was in the Victorian era. Or any of the eras before that. Rage in the workplace will have you branded as over-emotional and unprofessional just as quickly as a Victorian doctor branded women hysterical and sent them off for lobotomies. As a result, women become magicians at hiding their rage. They smile through gritted teeth and repeat the mantra, ‘I’m fine.’ They pretend to laugh while seething. They stuff their rage into top hats and transform it into white rabbits, palatable and sanitised. It’s all a sleight of hand. Look this way while I scream in the other direction. The fact that women cry when they’re angry is outrageous if you think about it. Our tears are so acceptable in society, however, our rage is not, and therefore we’ve evolved to displaying our rage via sobbing. You’re not sad, you’re pissed off, and those are two very different things.

I think about what that man said to me about once a week. ‘Why is it always war with you?’ I didn’t know how to tell him that every day I’m furious. For what life has served me and the women around me. How I’m still, still after all this time, expected to behave. How fear is an ongoing riptide and anger helps to resist it. Because he’s right. It is always war. I am constantly on a battle line. My shoulders relentlessly squared back to face something. I fall asleep with clenched fists which leads me to believe that even when I am sinking into unconsciousness I am ready for a fight. And I am not the only one. My girlfriends are as furious as I am. Over being primary caregivers. Over carrying out most of the emotional labour. Over having to be peacekeeper for their families. For being the one who does the tea round in every board meeting. For the rape, the beatings, the pain, and any other manner of trauma we inflict on women. We are all furious.

When this guy asked me about the war within me, he joked that my surname, ‘El-Wardany,’ had the word war in it already so maybe that’s why. I laughed it off at the time and agreed. All while thinking that my name, Salma, means peace in Arabic. I have both war and peace in my name and I’ve always taken that to mean there is war within me, but I am always trying for peace. I haven’t found it yet. Some days I give in to the riptide and I become a boiling thing, so furious, so bloody angry, I want to smash my fist into something, just so I can hear something, other than my sanity, break. Some days I want to hear the world splinter. Some days, if I listen hard enough, I can hear the furious wail of women all around the world.

I don’t have any answers for you, and I would never tell you to calm down, so instead, I’m here to tell you that if you too are feeling the rage, let it rip. Scream, in the daytime or the nighttime. Punch a pillow. Shout. Let it all out. Your fury is righteous and necessary and so valid. You’re allowed it. Plus, there’s a lot to be angry about.

Saying that, the best is yet to come. The best is yet to come. Scream it with me, the best is yet to come.