An Unpredictable Woman

and the cost of living as one.

Inside of me lives an unpredictable woman,

But she is not a woman —

She is a force,

An energy,

An expression.

I have, by all means, tried to

Tame her

Sedate her

Feed her

Breadcrumbs and short breaths of air

To satisfy her hunger,

But she eats like Kali Ma.

Being unpredictable is impractical. Especially when the unpredictability runs through a 30-something woman’s body. I don’t know when I turned a corner, but I know I took a sharp turn in my 20’s, and decided that being unpredictable was far too complicated to get uncomfortable for. I cut myself a sliver of a cake, and allowed myself to smear it with a thin spread of “unpredictability”, hoping, wishing, praying, it would settle the hunger.

I never consciously identified, pondered or mediated on what it meant to me, to be a woman. I know I’ve leaned heavily towards the masculine qualities of life, because they seemed to be dignified, not only in the outer world, but in my inner world as well. Reliability, responsibility, consistency, resilience. I wore them like a badge of honour. Like ancient tribal tattoos, I stained them into my flesh and presented them as my skin. I sighed in relief when I didn’t have to clean up the shattered glass and pottery left behind by the winds of change. A trademark: “Unpredictability was here.

Stay the course. Hold the pose. Keep up and you’ll be kept up.