My Girl Hillary

I love Hillary Clinton. That's not a popular opinion, even among Democrats, but I proudly cop to it. I don't mean I voted for her or that I think she'd be a good president (though both those things are true). I mean I love her. I have a Funko Pop doll of her on my mantle (granted, it's in the basement, but still). I admire her. I think she's strong. I think she's smart. I think she's a bitch, but that's okay because, in the words of Tina Fey (another woman I love), "Bitches get shit done." Y'all, I love her.

Most of all, what I love about my girl, Hillary, is the fact she is unapologetically Hillary. She owns up to her mistakes, but she doesn't apologize for being strong, or opinionated, or doing what she thinks is right, even if it turns out to be wrong later. I truly believe one of the reasons so many people dislike Hillary is this very lack of apology. A lot of the criticism leveled at her is, in reality, dislike of the fact she doesn't back down, and she doesn't apologize. Because in the US, women apologize. For being loud, for being ambitious, for being assertive, and sometimes, just for taking up space. Study after study has shown that women apologize more than men, and often for relatively silly things. It's a cultural epidemic.

And in the past three months or so, I've been infected.

I admire women like Hillary who are unapologetically themselves, yet I find that lately, I'm apologizing. For everything. It's a relatively new development for me, so I find it profoundly uncomfortable. Suddenly, I'm constantly fighting the urge to apologize for being myself.

I somehow got locked into a cycle where I let other people's opinions and actions make me second guess everything about myself and my relationships. I started feeling guilty for mundane things like asking questions, sending a text, needing a friend... basically for taking up space in people's lives. These were people who claimed to want to be in my life--friends and family--so the sense of shame and insecurity was (and, if I am honest, is) unsettling. I felt ashamed of myself for trying to connect with people, for having emotions other people found inconvenient. I was embarrassed, too often, for being an imperfect person. So I started to apologize. And it's been a hard habit to break.

And let me just say, I used past tense a lot in that last paragraph. And maybe present tense is more accurate. But that's another post.

This weekend, I made a decision: I'm banishing the word "sorry" from my vocabulary. (Spoiler alert: I've already failed a few times.)There are just some things that I won't apologize for anymore. So I made a list (yeah, I'm that kind of person--I'm not sorry):

1. Contacting or reaching out to people--I am allowed to take up mental and emotional space in someone's life. If someone chooses not to answer or to ignore me--if they refuse to give me that space--then I don't need to be in their life anymore; I need to learn to walk away, not apologize.
   
2. Feeling whatever it is I am feeling in a moment, even if that feeling is inconvenient or uncomfortable for other people.
3. Expressing what I am feeling, even if that feeling is inconvenient or uncomfortable for other people (notice a theme?)
4. Failing to live up to other people's unrealistic expectations of me. Sometimes I am messy, and always I am imperfect. I'm okay with it. If other people aren't, again, I need to walk away.

I've caught myself starting to apologize multiple times. I've started a text to apologize when someone ignored a previous message for hours--but then I had to remind myself--there's nothing wrong with contacting someone. If they don't want to respond to my delightful banter, clearly there's something wrong with them, not me. And in all seriousness, ignoring someone is rude; guilt shouldn't lie with me but the person doing it. I have no reason to apologize. I've felt the urge to apologize when someone tried to police my language. I had an apology all crafted before I managed to stop myself, and remind myself that the person was being manipulative, and I didn't need to apologize for that. Sorry is a word that should be reserved for actual remorse, not as a crutch because other people are rude or seem to feel vaguely inconvenienced by me.

"I am allowed to take up space--whether emotional, mental, or physical" is my new mantra. I think it should be every woman's mantra. It's something we all need to be reminded of. It's so easy to forget.

But there is one person I feel I owe a huge apology to: me

For expecting myself to be all things to all people; for carrying around guilt and blame that weren't mine to shoulder; for caring more what other people thought about me than what I thought about myself. For somehow letting someone else make me feel I didn't deserve validation or acknowledgement.

But no more apologies. People make mistakes--me included--and I'll live with it. I've had to suppress a lot of natural instincts--"sorry it took me so long to get back to you," "sorry to bother you," "sorry to ask, but . . ." These are ingrained in my daily conversations. And they shouldn't be.

It's too early in my new campaign to tell if it's making a difference in my interactions. But I'm going to keep reminding myself Hillary has been blamed for a lot in this country that isn't her fault
--everything from her husband's infidelities to Weinstein's harassment of women--and she doesn't back down, and she doesn't apologize for what isn't her fault. The truth is, often, I'm not really sorry. I might feel insecure. Uncertain. Even angry. But none of those are reasons to apologize. Far too many times, I'm offering an apology when one is owed to me. And that, frankly, is fucked up.

And by the way: No, I'm not sorry for swearing.