You are so melodramatic... don't make a big deal out of this... do you always have to exaggerate?
YES.
Women even today are often expected to be tame, to submit and obey; to fit the role of nice girl. You don't demand to have a voice. I did. Because I was desperate and angry enough.
I have been rebellious all my life and the role of drama queen was one of them. Most of the time it was unconscious, an attitude born from the need to be listened to and to be understood. My ideas, opinions and desires had often pushed aside as "too much", too utopian, grand, too crazy. Not normal. Out of pain I blew them up even bigger, made them real colorful and loud. "Do you see me now?" Defending myself against some outrageous judgment of my mother I threw myself on the floor pretending to have a heart attack. She didn't twitch an eye. "Control yourself," she said as ice cold as I was burning hot and crazed.
My emotional outbreaks created even more resistance at home. I talked too much, I talked too fast; I was the irrational exaggeration embodied.
If liking me was too much to ask I at least wanted them to see me....
My unsuccessful years of trying was summoned up by a the father of my child a decade later. "Why do you do this to me?" I asked him as he behaved cold, snide and detached, "please look at me, it is ME."
"So what?" he responded.
He was the ending chapter of my life in the beautiful pioneer country of Portugal. I had moved here to turn my back against "home". I felt the need to run, to distance myself from my traumas but of course they move with us, just play out in new scenarios. In Portugal, where nobody knew me I became a tough warrior and used my elbows creating businesses out of nothing. I had to be tougher, smarter and faster than the male world to win. I had to be the better guy.
The exaggeration of my power and possibilities gained me the status of go getter; I became a believable business woman, a relentless dude in bright red heels. I faked it big to make it big. I had created a fearless avatar and stepped into it slowly becoming the image I had painted. As much as I was stepping over the competition I loved my crew. With them I could be myself, down to earth without a mask, throwing dinners and parties for them and being a welcome guest in their houses. They had my back.
As tough business chicks in the 90's women learned to judge the feminine and other women as weak. My female role model, my mom, with a face of Grace Kelly and a body of Anna Nicole was neither educated nor street smart. She was what I never ever wanted to be; a repressed woman. Blonde jokes made me cringe.
My personal relationships were effed from the start as they were repetition of my fear of being ignored, a continuous loop of my childhood traumas. But outside of them I won; a sarcastic revenge of the "silly female" I turned feminine fits and diva behavior into a conscious tool.
I won court cases by intimidating lawyers with theatrical tales, got contracts using big stories and went on people's nerves to get what I wanted. I most probably fainted on demand, but there are things we better forget. I invented roles to play and from time to time that even meant to be "like a girl", needy, teary, soft. It still belonged to the drama queen as it was an exaggeration of what I perceived as the "weak" feminine characteristics.
That's how women become like men; we have to put away our sensibilities and soft sides, our caring, mothering and unconditional love to survive in a business world dominated by men.
Nobody ever asked me for my reasons, for what I actually wanted. I especially didn't; I was proud of being tough with myself. I needed to prove that I was good enough.
I was in competition with men, not very promising for love relationships.
When I proved my point in the business world I fell on my face in relationships. I demanded love, faithfulness, loyalty. I had no clue how to be all that to myself not to talk about possibly offering it first to my partner. "Treat the world like you would like to be treated" wasn't common knowledge at that time.
In my mind I was not appreciated. The world of love resisted and the more I pushed the more I was "hysterical."
You are so melodramatic... don't make a big deal out of this... do you always have to exaggerate?
How many tears, real, deep felt tears did I cry? In secret...
Our dramatic responses, our drama queens even if top theatrical have their reasons, valid reasons. They are often based on childhood traumas, fears, old stories and the desire to belong. Our soul knows how amazing we are, no wonder that she flips out if the world, not even her own human, refuses to see and step into it, own it. Our soul creates drama for us to get it; we are grand. Marianne Williamson got it and millions of women said YES!! Me too.
Sometimes we have to be drama queens to shake the status quo and make the world move forward. Like the women from "Advanced Style." They are dramatic style queens, unique Rebelles shaking the world of ageist beliefs.
I proved that women can be savvy and successful business femmes in a time when we just began to be "out there".
I learned that my big passionate feelings and dreams are valid, just that I have to be them not demand them.
I became a drama queen in the best sense of the word; a woman in her passionate outspoken power.
