Give Us More Than Cheerleaders!
I’m disappointed by the number of movies and television shows that imply or state outright that the only reason why a woman would ever overcome her obstacles and pain in order to succeed is through the love of a man. No one would ever dare imply that about a man, yet we’re supposed to believe that the sole reason why women are able to pull themselves out of a variety of diseases and depressions and various other emotional ailments is through the care of a man? Are you kidding me? Is it not at all possible that these women simply succeed because they are champions at heart? Is it not possible for women to take responsibility for our own successes as well as our failures? Why aren’t the same rules applicable to one as to the other? Why can’t we be given at least that much credit?
I find it incredibly unlikely that women are simply dependent upon attracting the notice of some man who is somehow entirely independent of her. Behind every good man may be a good woman, but I find even this unlikely. I think that when women succeed it’s because we deserve to, not because some man is standing at our backs telling us we can do it. I definitely don’t think that women need some young, hot male coach to fall for us and teach us all about how to do what we know how to do naturally. In fact, I believe that it is dangerous for us to work with men who are attracted to us, let alone men who we are attracted to. We need to learn how to set boundaries in our lives, and the last thing we need is someone making these boundaries impossible. We fall for the people we do, and we often if ever can’t control this process. We can however control whether this gets in the way of our careers or not. Dating a coach or agent is a good way to tank fast. There’s no way around it; we just have to do the best we can to cope once we fall.
It’s not our fault when our careers go south after we discover buried feelings for the people who are in the best possible position to help us with those careers. In fact, burying feelings is the best way to wind up with some career-ending injury or terrible emotional depression. What better way to severely undercut our self-confidence and self-esteem than to tell us with our actions that we don’t deserve who and what we want? So, we have to maneuver ourselves into a position where we can be with the people we want to be with. We have to stop trying to be part of their fields if it’s not what we want; if it is, we have to find another coach. We have to learn how to do it our way, how to bring our own total uniqueness to the sport. We can’t learn how to do it like them, because that will destroy any hopes of a romantic relationship between them. No one wants to date someone exactly like themselves--no one mildly healthy, that is!
We need to learn how to become the people we need ourselves to be. We have to stop trying to please everyone around us in order to succeed. We need especially to lose the voice of the person we most want to please inside our heads, because chances are they are preventing us without realizing it from realizing our full potential. They won’t be able to encourage us to do exactly what we need to because their job is to worry about us and hope we don’t get hurt. They won’t be able to play the role they want to play in our lives, and encourage us to risk ourselves in growth. They are incapable of encouraging us in a direction likely to lead to the utmost success because they will be too concerned about us injuring ourselves to see clearly. If not, they will be too concerned with doing as objective and perfect a job as possible to fully take our words and emotional needs into account and therefore will accidentally wind up hurting us anyway.
We deserve to get our needs met in this lifetime. We deserve to have both romantic relationships and successful mentoring relationships, and to have separation between these two. We deserve most of all to be loved for who we are. To forget how to be ourselves is the worst crime of all, and the one most likely to lead to self-destruction, injury, and pain. We need to have some distance from the people we care about most in our lives so that they cannot have the opportunity to make us feel super claustrophobic, as they are so often wont to do. We need to have the strength to push back against men who think they can help us out by ending whatever relationship they believe is “causing” our pain--I.e. the one where we get our needs met so much we come to love the men who believe we are too good for them. We need to have the self-assurance to stand in the face of those who doubt us and shout that we deserve whatever we want, simply because we want it. We deserve the right to be ourselves, no matter what, and to have people in our lives who believe this for us when we no longer can. Mostly, we deserve a division between our cheering and coaching sections when we compete at whatever we want to compete in. This is necessary for our sanity!