09/08/2021
Calm down, mare!” the cowboy shouts as he approaches the wide-eyed, snorting mustang mare tied to the wooden hitching post.
“You’re fine!” he says, as he readjusts the saddle balancing on his hip. But the mare does not seem fine. She tries to back away, hits the end of the rope, and sits back before lurching forwards again, desperately trying to find relief from the rope that feels like teeth clamping down into the crown of her head.
“Calm down, mare!” the cowboy shouts, as he walks towards her with a chunk of carcass from the loins of her hooved brother, before cinching it down on her back in the same way a mountain lion would grab at her flank before ripping into her flesh with fangs and claws. The mare shakes her head and rears up before hitting the end of the rope again.
“You’re overreacting,” the man growls, the smell of a Big Mac on his breath. Now the mare stands very still. She looks defeated. Her head hangs low. She seems smaller now—shrunken. Motionless. Unblinking. Holding her breath. The fire in her eyes is replaced with a dullness as she stares blankly into a world far away from this hitching post, remembering the way she ran across the wide open plains of Wyoming, in a world where there were no two-leggeds in sight.
“See, you made a big deal out of nothing. What a drama queen! ‘Bout time you calmed down,” he chastises her. The mare stands ever so still, frozen, much like an impala being torn apart by a cheetah would do in order to numb out the tearing of teeth on organs.
I wish I could ask her, “What’s happening inside you right now?” I knew what she’d tell me. She’d say, “Something isn’t right here. It feels like a lion is grabbing me. It smells like the body of my dead brothers. My legs are telling me to run away but I can’t. I am being told to calm down, but my body knows what it knows. Something is not right here. It is not safe to be in my body so I must leave it.”
My stomach turns. Every time the man tells her to calm down, I think about what a cop out those words are. I think about how much easier it is to tell her to calm down than it would be to face the damage of his approach and attempt to see the world through her eyes:
“I see this saddle is scaring you. You have every right to be afraid. What is it about the saddle that is scary? Is it the stirrups flinging? The leather creaking? The way it feels to carry it on your back? The way the cinch grabs at your belly? Let me listen to you so that I may know how I can make this scary thing less scary, so that you may feel heard, so that we can use this moment to connect more deeply rather than rupture the threads between us.”
But for a man who was beaten with a belt for letting any tears show from the time he could tie his shoes, for a man who now numbs his own pain with a bottle of whiskey each night, “calm down” is the only response he seems to be capable of.
I wish I could take away the “calm down.”
I imagine untying her from the rotting hitching post. I imagine telling her, “You have survived your whole life on the plains by fleeing at the rustle of a bush. You watched your brothers and sisters fall to their death when they took time to question and contemplate the breeze before fleeing. And now you are supposed to calm down? Now you are supposed to deny the very instinct that kept you alive amongst the sagebrush and mountain lions? Listen! You are not crazy. You have every reason for feeling what you are feeling. You are a genius. You carry nature's blueprint for survival and it is burnt into your blood and your bones.
You are not crazy.
You are not crazy.
You are not crazy.”
I imagine telling the cowboy that this is not okay and the way he would stand, legs wide, hands resting on hips, belt buckle shining like the beads of perspiration oozing from underneath his cowboy hat, and eyes narrowed into slits as he would growl at me to calm down, as he would roll his eyes and tell me that I am overreacting, as he would tell me he’s a professional and so he knows best and that this is the way it's always been done, as he would tell me to stay out of his way so he can do his job, as he would explain to me that this is the problem with women–you’re too goddamn sensitive.
Instead, I stand still, right where I am. Motionless. I lower my head. I shrink smaller. Eyes glazed over, I stare down at the dust beneath my boots.
But still, I cannot seem to shake off the ache in my heart from the way I see myself, my mother, and my mother’s mother reflected back to me in those empty almond eyes. I am haunted by the aching of every woman I've ever known stare back at me from the eyes of the wild mare at the hitching post.
The bones of a wild horse offer her the blueprints for survival just as the womb of a woman houses incredible wisdom. But instead of our emotions being honored, we are painted as oversensitive, overreactive, and hysterical. The expression of our emotions is seen as weak, the validity of them is denied and we learn not to trust them.
I once read a quote by Hafiz: The words you speak become the house you live in. Well, ‘hysteria’ is derived from the Greek ‘hystera’, meaning uterus. So I’d say I’m living in one distorted, carnival funhouse of a world, complete with mazes you lose yourself inside of and curved, warped mirrors that make you look unrecognizable even to yourself. Uterus = hysteria.
We are told we are crazy, and we believe them. We are told we are overreacting and we second guess ourselves. We are told to calm down, and we try to numb our feelings, shove them down, and play the cool girl. We shrink ourselves small to make others more comfortable. Our lives become a walking apology for being too much—too passionate, too loud, too expressive, too big.
The messages may sound different but they’re all the same:
“Calm down.”
“Geez, it was just a joke!”
“Why are you so upset? Must be that time of the month again!”
“Wow, why do you have to be such a drama queen about it?”
“Chill out.”
“You’re overreacting.”
No!
Calm down is an easy way out so you do not have to take responsibility for your actions.
Calm down is an excuse to not have to understand me.
Calm down is a dismissal that says my feelings do not matter to you.
Calm down is saying my feelings are wrong and I shouldn’t trust them.
Calm down is a muzzle to quiet the truth coming from my bones.
Listen.
We need less women to “calm down” and more women to grow louder, to howl with sacred rage at the way the Earth is being ravaged. We need more women who are passionate and turned on. We need more women who are not afraid to take up space. We need more women who are terrifying and opinionated and disruptive instead of pretty, polite, and pleasing.
Listen to me!
Do not tell me for one second how to feel.
I am not hysterical, your behavior is problematic. I am not crazy.
My animal body knows what it knows. And I trust what my bones are telling me with the unwavering trust of a wild mustang mare as she flinches on a wide-open prairie from the smell of a mountain lion stepping quietly through the sagebrush 3 miles away.
We are not crazy. We are the Wild Women.
