Sooner Secrets

I’m not the daughter you always wanted. I love myself for being smart, independent, and blunt. And I’m not sorry.

I love this. Although all of my writings are introspective and personal, I feel like I leave myself and let my fingers do the work.
I don't even look at the screen when I type. I look at my reflection in my dark window to find my thoughts in my own eyes.

Tonight, I wrote about 15 of these for sooner secrets. No, I will not post all of them. Most had content so deep I don't even like to admit to myself. Although I will not publicly confess, anonymously confessing is indescribably therapeutic.

I've just struggled with myself for such a long time.
It really is true that the hardest lesson I've ever had to learn was how to love myself.

Although I love my family and friends unconditionally, I felt like I went without the praise I deserved for so many years.
It is also true that I love Oklahoma.
I am an Okie and honestly can't ever picture myself living anywhere else.
But Oklahoma does not love me.

It is true that Oklahoma considers an intelligent woman to be a menace in society.
Long-time Oklahomans anyways.

It is also true that my parents told me they'd be happy if I ever brought a man home.
It's like they've already given up on me.
I'd like to think that I haven't given up.

It's so different at college.
I receive compliments that aren't even sarcastic!
Never in my life have so many people told me that I am beautiful, amazing, or unique.
To the extent that it has changed my life.
And I thank you for that.
Once my friend Emile told me I'd be a wonderful tour guide because I'm so charming.
I laughed out loud.

And then I realized she was being serious.

I've been told that I'll get assaulted on my honeymoon.
That I should stop talking in class if I want a date to prom.
To not act smart to attract the attention of fraternity boys at socials.
To smile, look pretty, and not say anything.
I've been told that smart women are ugly, boring, and wasting their time if they can't make a good sandwich.
I've been told by my parents that they'd be surprised if I ever got married.

Forget that. All of that. It makes me so sick.

Do me a favor, stay true to yourself.

Nothing is worse than waking up and realizing that your life is a lie.
That you aren't who you think you are.
Or who you could be.

It is sad that I have so many friends with so much potential who have given up on love.
18 and 19-year-old girls who consider love to be incompatible with their own ambitions.
Girls who have resigned to being spinsters, old maids,
Girls who believe they will be virgins when they die.
Girls who believe they are without the opportunity for love, marriage, and motherhood.
Because they refuse to conform.
Because they are proud of who they are.
Of what they have accomplished,
and what they have the potential to do.

Am I the only one who thinks this is sad?

Occasionally all of my semi-feminist friends and I sit around a circle and complain about how much we hate this system.
How no matter what, it seems we are set to lose.
We have come to believe that men are after women who are beneath them.
Double entendre. Har har.

It is true that being called out for being smart embarrasses me.
I hate hate hate hate hate HATE it when people make comments like these:
Aren't you a genius or something?
It should be easy for you, you're like twice as smart as me.
What are yo,u a senior now?
Why don't you do us all a favor and learn quantum physics or something.

Forget that.

Being smart doesn't make my life easier. Ironically, it makes my life more complicated.

But I refuse to give up on life, and on love.
Even if it means I have to search out a superior race of man that doesn't exist.
That some man somewhere in the world will burst through my dorm room door and tell me I complete him.
That someone will like that I am smart, independent, and blunt.
It's such an odd possibility that it blows my mind.
Maybe this exists outside my dreams after all.
We shall see.