Turn It Off

My lunch appointment is laughing at me. I'm her guest at The Saint Paul Grill, which is where you would go to have a long Mad Men style lunch in St. Paul in 2014. It's the sort of restaurant that makes me nervous, where I don't want to eat anything and spend most of the lunch worrying about whether or not I've got something in my teeth.

Things are not off to an auspicious start.

I'm flustered by the fact that maître d‘ has tried to pull my chair out for me (I just sat down in it), has tried to adjust it for me once I'm in it (I pulled myself into the table, gabbing the whole time), and has now tried to put my napkin in my lap (I jumped). Despite my expensive dress and the Tiffany's I'm wearing, I still feel like someone's country cousin.

Once the maître d‘ has stopped hovering and my lunch appointment has stopped laughing I settle my ruffled feathers. Thankfully, she's an old friend and a mentor, and I wonder if her choice of restaurant was a much a lesson in how to act around major donors as it was a convenient place to catch up with one another.

It's a long, lovely lunch. We talk about the business we're both in, I tell her about my achievements and challenges from the past year, and she offers advice and commiseration. We start chatting about mission and vision of the organizations I work and volunteer for and it's like all the missteps from the preceding hour vanish. I'm articulate and passionate without being overbearing. I tell her a story that makes her tear up a little, another one that makes her laugh, and by the time the waiter brings our check around she reaches out and pats my hand.

"You're doing fine, kid."

It's one of the proudest moments of my adult life.

About twelve hours later, I'll have one of the most mortifying moments of my adult life. 

It's stupid, and shouldn't be something that keeps me awake (which it does). I hijack a conversation. That's it. Something that started out as funny and playful turns into a conversation about the internet and objectification. It's not the first time I've done this (at last count, this has happened upward of seven times. This year.), and even as I'm doing it I'm thinking thisisnotthewayyouwantedthiseveningtogo but I just can't stop myself.

I am so mortified by my own behavior that I don't sleep. At all. I spend the night puttering around the apartment, reading a book about Thurgood Marshall to distract myself and right around 3:00am start with a few hours of unproductive self-probing. And here's what I realize while unproductively pulling out bits of my personality and examining them. Ever since I was a tiny girl I have had a tape playing in my head that runs on and on and on about women and objectification. About equal pay and Title IX. About domestic and sexual violence. And on. And on. And on.

I don't know how to turn it off. 

It's not always a bad thing. My dedication to ending domestic and sexual assault helps me overcome shyness and stage fright and communicate passionately and effectively. Thinking about Alice Paul or Marie Curie makes me feel less like someone's country cousin and more like one in a long line of women who are trying to leave the world a better place than they found it. Reminding myself of how far women have left to go keeps me motivated and engaged enough to read through a stack of grant applications that will benefit women's health when the only thing I want to do when I get home is to curl up with some trashy television and stop thinking for awhile.

Feminism, my particular intense brand of it, has been responsible for some of the best, proudest moments of my life. Hearing my name announced cum laude, with distinction as I accepted my college degree, booking my first grant for an organization dedicated to ending domestic violence, and crossing finish lines would not have been possible if I didn't feel like everyone with a XX chromosome was peering over my shoulder telling me to work harder, do more, be better.

I don't know how to turn it off. 

It's not always a good thing. I am constantly reaching out to my friends for pro-bono help with my nonprofit work. I am apparently incapable of having a funny, playful conversation with someone I know to be a feminist and a good person without jumping on my soapbox. I have, on more than one occasion, worked myself to exhaustion because that goddamn tape is always playing in my head. One in four Minnesota women experiences domestic violence. Every two minutes a person in America is sexually assault. 90% of them are women. You're still only making .80 to the dollar. You can do more.

Feminism--again, my own particular intense brand of it--is also responsible for some of the more embarrassing, ridiculous moments in my adult life. Sexual miscues that leave me cringing for weeks afterward, conversations that degenerate into shouting matches, relationships that ended too soon because I wasn't willing to make a commitment that required a sacrifice, perhaps wouldn't have been possible if I didn't feel like everyone with a XX chromosome was peering over my shoulder telling me to work harder, do more, be better.

It's something I've got to learn to turn off.