Don't Be a Lady

In the society I grew up in, I was taught I must always put others first. Always. Because that is what a lady does. My needs were secondary. To think of my needs first was a crime too unspeakable to mention. When I asked what if I needed to go the washroom? I was told if it would make others uncomfortable or put the focus unnecessarily onto me I must hold it until the appropriate time. It was drilled into me each and every day how I was only allowed to think of my needs once I was alone and the day’s duties were done.

This ‘education’ led to many things developing in my life: one was a tendency to have repeated kidney infections, where I would pass blood clots and experience excruciating pain for no obvious reason. An investigative operation was done. When I came round in the recovery room, the specialist said: ‘Do you tend to hold your water?’

I hadn’t ever thought about it, but I said I guessed I did. He said they filled my bladder while I slept to see how much it could hold. They kept filling and filling it until they hit the limit at 1.5 liters (nearly four times the usual daily amount, and almost twice the night time amount). He said this normally only happens when someone is forced to hold their water for very long periods of time and the body adapts. He left the question hanging in the air. I didn’t say anything, but I knew the answer. He went on to explain that holding my water was breeding the infections that caused the bleeding. To reset my system, I had to take three months of antibiotics and retrain my body to take washroom breaks much more frequently. Every four hours. Very unladylike.

But these brutal infections were nothing in comparison to the true cost of my training to be ‘a lady’.

I learned I was second to everyone else. Worth less than everyone else. Strangers mattered more than me. I existed to serve, never to be served. I was invisible, an avatar to some kind of mysterious belief in feminine submission. I was taught how to walk, how to sit, how to dress, how to set a table, how to host an afternoon tea, made to read the book on how to address a marquis correctly (because as I was told, one never knows whom they will meet and it’s vital to be prepared). How to plan, cook and serve a beautiful meal and entertain guests, without ever flagging in energy, how to pair wine with food, how to talk about art and theatre, in short, how to be a trophy wife in the 1980s patriarchal world of my teenage years. But never how to love myself. Never that.

My mother had very fine ideas for me, as if we still lived in the 18th century. She imagined me married off to a very wealthy, much older man who could, (as she proclaimed far more than once), ‘Take care of me.’ Around the edges of this restrictive, demanding, exhausting life I read tame stories about love. When I didn’t have anything left to read I made up my own (better) ones in my head.

I was thoroughly and completely groomed to be useless. And so it was that I found love in all the wrong places until I slammed into the ultimate version of the one who could fulfil the fantasy my mother buried into me: my worth defined by the man who loved me - and the more successful, handsome, charismatic, and powerful he was, the more I was worth. My mother wanted it all. Everything. Love was negotiable. When I became engaged to a high society Frenchman whose family were friends with Jacques Chirac, my mother dragged me around a party to show everyone the massive Cartier diamond ring that weighed down the entire joint between my knuckles.

I felt like a prized race horse paraded by her proud owner. I had done everything she wanted, and yet…those love stories in my head troubled me. I wanted that. I wanted to feel something deep, meaningful, powerful. Something that could awaken my soul. My mother told me to calm down, that love was a lie and it never lasted after its first blush.

So I obeyed, thinking of the weekends at his Parisian apartment near Luxembourg Gardens and our pretty little flat in Holland Park, London. How we traveled first class on the Eurostar every weekend, and dined in the best restaurants both cities had to offer. I could have whatever I wanted. He sent me to Luxor to write the first draft of The Lost Valor of Love in a suite overlooking the Nile. I was living the dream. Or was I? I cared for him, admired him terribly. But I didn’t love him. I know he loved me, and I felt awful I couldn’t feel the same. Everything felt wrong - as if my life were a lie. I ended the engagement. I simply could not marry a man I didn’t love. He said he understood. My mother, predictably, stopped talking to me.

But then, one fateful day in spring 2009, it happened. Both my and my mother’s most cherished hopes juxtaposed into a single, perfect possibility. The day I met him my life changed the way a key unlocks a door one never knew existed. It felt as if everything at last had come together. I exulted in vindication, in my long, long wait for love.

But I lacked something essential. My own worth. I let a powerful, charismatic man sweep me off my feet - an empty vessel with a heart primed to be loved and given worth, to be given a reason to exist. What a lesson I set myself up to learn. How painful to comprehend over the course of that fateful marriage and the carnage that has come after how important it is to have worth before one seeks to love another. Love is not enough.

If I had believed I mattered, my needs mattered, I am valuable, equal and do not exist simply to serve others, would I have lived the life I lived? Been with the men I was with? I do not think so. My whole pursuit of validation through love has defined the selection of men I have allowed into my life.

And now, I have learned through great pain where my error was, and where it leads. And now, there can only be one purpose. To continue to embrace my worth, my value, to speak my truth, to be unafraid of those who will try to push me back into a corner. To be fearless. To be alone and to choose - not to be chosen.

And there lies the greatest difference of all. We do not wait for the privilege of love. No. A woman who has earned and holds her power, her worth, and her value knows others must earn the privilege to love her. And now the wait will be worth it, because we are enough. Far, far more than enough.

With love,

E A