Gender Lines

This post has nothing to do with Christmas - but it has everything to do with a thought I had while laying back down after a 5 am feeding.  So I'm going ahead and writing it down...before I forget. :)

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Growing up, I wasn't happy to be a girl.  I didn't want to be a boy exactly but I didn't much want to be a girl either.  It felt limiting somehow, but not in the way I think it does for most people.

You see, instead of feeling like I was limited to girl-specific undertakings...I felt instead that I ought to take on more boy-specific projects.  And excel at them.  That I needed to strive beyond "girlish" things.  It's hard to explain exactly, and I have no idea where I got this drive.  But in the last few years, becoming a wife and now a mother, I realized that all I had ever really wanted, was permission to be "just" a girl.  And do stereotypical girl things.  And enjoy them.

It's like the song, "everything you can do, I can do better."  I felt like that was my calling.  Like I had to prove that motto - in everything, and most especially boyish things.  I played a musical instrument that usually is played by males.  I excelled in science and math - all of my classes in these subjects were male-dominated.  I wanted to be an astronaut - also a male-dominated field.  I fought hard against showing emotions - especially crying.  I had this overwhelming sense that I needed to prove I could do whatever a boy could, and could do it better.  Hell, I even tried to learn how to throw a football (but am too innately clumsy to get very far in the world of sports).

But here's what I'm coming to realize.  While there will always be individuals that will blur gender lines, and excel in areas that are not typical for their particular gender - not everyone has to be such an individual.  In fact, if everyone was, there would be no gender lines to blur.  We'd probably cease to notice male or female as much.  And I think we'd lose something important.

So, it's really only been in the last few months that I've realized I'd like to be female...and that is okay.  I can be a girl, a woman, and enjoy the things women are "supposed" to.  And I'm not letting anyone down.  It doesn't make me less of a person or a failure.  It just makes me me.  And I happen to be female.