Hey You

Hey you,

Yes. You. I see you.

I know sometimes it feels as if no one sees you. It’s easy to think that you’re invisible in your own house, in your own life. The laundry that appears magically in their drawers, the fridge that fills itself, the beds that get made, the meals that appear hot and ready to be enjoyed.

But I see you. I feel you. I know you. Because I am you. All women are you to a greater or lesser degree. As women we bear the burden of our foremothers. The ones who got down on their knees, who nodded gratefully, who lived on the precipice of a choice-less choice: being subservient but kept or single and shamed. That was it - those were their only options - and we carry some of their outdated emotional genetics with us, heavy as they are and sometimes we don’t even know it.

But those historical codes are old and you…you are built of a fresh and new code. I know you don’t feel it. I know you feel like a soggy tea-towel that smells faintly of mildew. I know you wonder if you’ll ever not be tired again. I know that you wish you had time to wash and dry your hair. I bet you wish you had time to wash your face, exfoliate it, put a face mask on, relax.

Instead, if you’re anything like me, you used the shower gel to wash yesterday’s make up off and tied your hair up wet, in a bun. That’s if, of course, you had time for an actual shower. You sniffed your top to see if you can wear it again and avoid throwing it on the ever-burgeoning laundry pile. You probably ate your kids’ crusts for breakfast and knocked half a cup of warm coffee back before you were needed as a waitress, a taxi driver, a doctor (you’ll reheat the other half later because you can’t be arsed to make a new one…because you’re so damn tired).

You’ve probably got a list too. A list of all the things you need to do. Some of them are easy but remain forever undone (going to the post office, taking stuff to the charity shop), some are overwhelmingly vague (tidy the whole house), some are plain awful (change all the beds), some are administrative and involve paper and forms and just looking at it on the list makes you want to clean toilets because the fucking printer is still out of ink, and some are just never going to get done so you wonder why you bothered putting it on the list in the first place (clean skirting board, organise loft).

And so when we are finally alone; when the kids are at school or daycare and there’s no one else in the house…we procrastinate. We scroll social media, we binge watch TV, we nap and when we wake we beat ourselves up for not doing what we needed to do. But here’s the thing: maybe you needed to rest. And here’s another thing: maybe you wouldn’t need to rest so desperately if we were better at asking for our time.

Time. It doesn’t have to be a weekend or a night away. Ask for an uninterrupted hour to get ready. Lock the bedroom door. Work it in to the schedule. Sit down and ask for what you need. Not because you deserve it but because it’s your time to ask for. As the old saying goes, if you don’t ask, you don’t get and as women, we’ve been so bad at asking for things.

Men? They’re great at asking for things. Can I watch the footie at the pub? Can I play golf? Do you mind if I go for a pint after work?

Women. It’s time we started asking and answering. “Yes, sure. Enjoy your pint and when you get back you can do bedtime and I’m going to take an hour or so for a bath.”

“Absolutely! Of course you can go to golf tomorrow. But today, I’m going to head out for the afternoon? That cool?”

You get the picture.

Go and ask for your time.