Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals

Who Am I?

I am Gaenor.

I am a child of a farming community.

I’m a chef.

I’m a wife and a mother.

I live in a foreign country.

I am lily white naive.

And I have privilege.

 

Who Am I Not?

This is where it really gets heavy.

Because I am not anything that society expects me (us) to be right now.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not a best friend.

Sometimes I say bad things about people, including my siblings, my husband and I am not averse to spiting my innocent growing children.

I am not special in any way, shape or form.  Or certainly that’s what I tell myself when I toss and turn at night after late night online scrolling.

I am not an attention seeker, and yet I seek to be sought.

To my dismay, I am neither a photographer, nor a writer, yet I still seek to be sought.

Also what I am not is an activist.  Nor am I en eco-warrior… all these labels that we should be mantelling [sic] in an era where black lives matter, where greedy corrupt people make a living off the poor and un-privileged, where they end up are destroying cities, and pristine islands with explosions and leaking oil.

 

Again, let me tell you who I am.

I am privileged to an extent I have no stories to tell.  I cannot speak about that time when I was 20 and I shoved an idiot out of a bed I had crashed in at some random little party because he was trying to feel me up, only to hear him mutter ‘bitch‘ as he stumbled out.  There is no real story there.

I cannot tell you the stories of feeling so incredibly heavy with numbness and not being able to say why.   There is no story to explain it. I chose not to take medicine to drag me out of those spiralling moments,  I was probably just another spoiled 20-something who couldn’t figure out her place, or so the opinions might fall.

I cannot tell you a story of any hardship at all.  Never have I been without a roof over my head.  Never have I had to worry about getting a cup of fresh water to drink and while it can take me 30 minutes of commuting to take my children to their school, this is made out of choice, not circumstance.

Never have I not been able to get a job.

Never have I been discriminated against according to what I can and can’t eat, nor what I wear, nor what I can do with this mouse brown (and grey) head of hair.

Never have I been without something to read, thereby ensuring I have access to a broad range of thoughts, ideas and opinions, the latter being something I choose to inflict upon myself.

And what do I do with this privilege?

Unfortunately, not a lot.  I acknowledge the fact that I have it and I try to educate my family that having privilege is not a bad thing if we acknowledge it, and act on what we know and have learnt.  Once we realise what we have, we need to be better.  We need to broaden our scope of associations.

It’s a source of discomfit that I don’t have that thing, that necessary attribute that can take this privilege I have to make a great ocean-size difference to the world.

But I need to start somewhere.

Here is my voice.  Hear my voice.

GdP

August 2020

PS.  I realise that I am dropping in a very tepid few words of what is currently all over a version of our own personal newspapers.  In 6 months the conversations may have altered somewhat, but for now, today, I need to acknowledge this and say what I feel.  I’ve been having too many one-sided (yet conflicting) chats in my head.