Growing up, I was a ‘chatterbox’. ‘Headstrong’. ‘A good debater.’ It was endearing – I accepted these epithets with open arms. It never occurred to me that these attributes could be a bad thing.
It was odd, then, to enter into an unstable adolescence, to see these descriptions sour, to become ‘bossy’, and ‘too loud’ and ‘annoying’. I watched my intelligence go from being described as ‘impressive’ to ‘overbearing’. My chattiness from ‘sweet’ to ‘obnoxious’. I quickly learned to shrink myself: I started apologising more, downplaying my successes, and prioritising the thoughts and feelings of others over my own. Over time, I became more and more far removed from that confident and brave child I once was.
I’ve always felt like an imitation of a human, like I was pretending to know how to be a person, how to be a girl. I’ve been lucky enough to never struggle with gender dysphoria, yet there’s always been some deep sense that I’m doing ‘being feminine’ wrong. I think, like many women, I internalised a set of societal expectations, and fell into an inevitable crisis when I realised that these were impossible to maintain. To be the perfect woman is to embody a paradox. You have to be beautiful, but not vain. Be assertive, but never bossy. Look after those around you, be a nurse, a mother, a teacher. Never complain, never admit you’re struggling, never admit that being everything all at once might be just a little bit too much. In trying to do everything I thought was expected of me, I’ve run myself into the ground.
“Sorry” is a fixed part of my vocabulary, of the vocabulary of women. In classes, coffee-shop catch ups, caffeine-fuelled study sessions – we spend more time apologising for what we’re about to say than we spend saying it. There’s been a lot of feminist concern with women chronically over-apologising . Whether it’s an issue of self-confidence, an attempt to people-please, or pure habit, the female lexis is perpetually penitent. I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and the way the language I use has shaped my view of myself, and my relationship to the world around me. More than a funny observation about sociolinguistics, does this never-ending guilt speak more widely to my experience as a woman in society?
I’m often left asking what I’m apologising for, who I’m apologising to. A product of the Oxford workload, I’m sure, but I’m forever fleeing from that feeling of never having done enough. Beyond the standard imposter syndrome, I think there’s an added feminist pressure to do it all, to be everything, to have it together. Not only are we contending with an unmeetable academic expectation, but a self-enforced duty to do it well, and make the most of the opportunity. Nothing will ever be good enough, and so we default to apology, an implicit acknowledgement of inadequacy. All those for not meeting some unmeetable list of expectations, assuming all other voices in the room are waiting to cry out, to say that they know how much I’m struggling to keep up.
I’ve realised recently that no one knows what they’re doing. Whether it’s slurred admissions of struggle as we stumble home, or late night manic library breakdowns – I’m beginning to see that everyone is faking the whole ‘having it together’ thing. I’ve tried to find comfort in this, the unanimity of these experiences, but really it just makes me sad. I look at my incredible and accomplished female friends, how brilliant and beautiful they are, and lament the society that makes them think they’re not enough. Sitting in tutorials, I hear my classmates tear down their essays, critiquing their work, and themselves, before our tutor even says a word. It’s easier to observe in other people, to see the disparity between belief and reality. It’s harder for me to give myself that same grace.
A lot of the time I don’t even catch myself apologising. I’ve been doing my best though – I’ve realised that as much as I hate myself, I hate the patriarchy more. And weirdly, it’s this spite that’s made the biggest change. Small acts of feminist resistance: removing the exclamations from my emails, contributing to conversations without an exposition of apologies – slowly I hope for these small acts to amass to a bigger change. I underestimated the impact language has on us. For me, it was a linear relationship. The way I felt, internally, impacted the way I expressed myself, externally. I would feel apologetic, or not good enough, and so I’d apologise, or explain that what I was saying was probably a load of rubbish.
I’m beginning to realise how wrong this is. The words I use – they don’t just disappear as they leave my mouth. They reabsorb, constantly reshaping and reinforcing my self-view. It feels like self-defence, to rip myself to pieces before anyone else gets a chance. But this self-mutilation we carry out, degrading every aspect of ourselves, it isn’t fair, and it isn’t a defence. Especially in academic spaces, it’s easiest to see the impact empirically. Believing we don’t belong in these spaces, or that our work isn’t up to the standard we feel it should be – these things don’t do us any favours. I used to think that the self-doubt I had made me a harder-worker: I silently refuted concerned teachers or friends, telling myself if I didn’t hold myself to such unmeetable standards I’d lose my work-ethic. I realise now they weren’t sabotaging me in telling me to relax, to be kinder to myself.
I promise you, you are more likely to succeed by believing in yourself, by rewarding your brain with kindness. I say this, acknowledging that I am far from perfect, but I’m doing my best. And I’m learning (slowly) that this is all that can be asked of me. I’m finding power in weakness, in asking for help, and finding a balance between everything and nothing. When we’ve been praised for being the best, for overexerting ourselves, taking a step back can feel like defeat. Apology springs to our defence, but there is nothing to be sorry for. Our best, regardless of what it looks like on a given day, is all anyone can ask of you.