ΑΘΗΝΑ

Soft Women

an alternative title I'm thinking of is "Lightness/lightweight" . I'm trying to convey a paradoxical lightness through figures we would conventionally associate with heaviness: bodies fighting with a non-existent gravity. Rolls and skin clashing with objects/grounds that are not there. Empty bodies, vague lines that mean nothing yet can evoke in us an ingrained idea of how the world works.

Shit aint good here.

My mom is dying from kidney cancer in one kidney and scarring on the other, and my MIL wont speak to us because she wants us to fly out for a wedding and I simply can't be at this wedding while my mom is in the same province critically ill. On top of that, i owe like 500 dollars for things including shoes like bitch I aint even got any shoes rn. We are 100,000 dollars in debt and thought we would be able to pay it off and move out of our Apartment with a broken toilet that sewage keeps leaking up into...

And I just can't do this anymore. Everyone has demands and expectations and no one has even asked me how I am.

My dad was fired so my mom is going through losing a kidney with no money and it's not like I can do anything, a million people want money from me I dont Even have.

Im cracking at the seams.

Ive editted this to add my Paypal. If you have some kindness in your heart please help.

When my siblings died we couldnt afford the funeral, and right now its Flashback Season since all of this is happened within weeks of the ten year anniversary of that.

Thank you to everyone who donated and if you could reblog this version so those people can see I would be grateful.

♡♡♡♡

but i hate kids.

or really, i hate how they’ve always been expected from me.

when i was five i was given “babies.” i hated the hardness of dolls, disposed of them for dramatic stories between stuffed animals. i knew how to wrap, feed, and care for a baby before i could spell my last name. when i was nine i was already “watching the kids”. i was only four years older than my cousins were. i wanted to go out and play. instead i was expected to have responsibility. by the time i was thirteen all of my friends had told me about how many children they were going to have in their twenties. 

my hips were “child-bearing” hips. my brother was a scientist, or a fireman, or a steamroller. i was going to make a good housewife, or mom, or nanny, or mom, or mom, or mom.

and when my body hurt, i was told it wasn’t really my body, not really, it belonged to my future children. i couldn’t cut or snip or tie anything; i was trapped by the potential energy that hung above me. a boulder, threatening. i couldn’t get tattoos, because what would i tell my children? i couldn’t kiss a girl, because what would i tell the children? i couldn’t be risky or wild or anything but a lady, because what about the children?

and when i said “i don’t want children” - not biologically, at least, not when cancer and depression and a whole other host of terrible things lives inside me - do you know what they said? “it’ll change, wait and see” “it’s not bad” “you’ll get used to it” “when you meet the right man” “you don’t want to be lonely”.

i don’t hate kids. i’m great with them. 

but then i’m told again that my life will be forfeit to them - something in me snaps angry. “wait until you have kids” “you should travel before you have children” “you’ll be more happy.” 

i hate kids! i’ve snarled. i don’t mean it at all. but god. please, leave me alone. i don’t want to be a biological mom. 

it’s like we’re born with a uterus and told “this is your whole life. your singular purpose. your job.”