The Girl Without A Face

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, I think our triggers hold our lessons. Something we need to learn and understand is inside of them. This one I’ve been dealing with recently is interesting for me, it’s something I’ve dealt with all my life arguably. I’d like to believe that because I’m a woman I get treated the same as a man. I’ve put myself in many situations to try to “be one of the guys” since I could remember. All the friends I played with on my street when I was little were boys, I was the only girl. I shifted and changed my interests just to be part of the group. I thought I fit in well. I played basketball and street hockey, but secretly played with barbies by myself. Maybe I always knew being a girl was something that made me different, something I had to hide. Being feminine meant that I was not one of them. That would’ve gotten me crucified at the time. Even as a small child I knew what I could and couldn’t say to be a part of the group. There was another girl who tried to be one of us, apparently she didn’t get the memo. She was never allowed to enter. I felt cool.

During my teenage years, I always had guy friends just like when I was little. I don’t know what it was. I still don’t know why I could relate to them even though on some level I knew they looked at me differently. Maybe I liked the challenge? Maybe because my dad was filled with masculine energy I wanted to make him proud of me? I always felt like he wanted a boy, but instead he got me. My sister and I were told we were both going to be Michael, but last minute my mom had to pick out girl names. I knew being a boy would have made my life easier. At least it seemed that way. Maybe I never put it together when I was younger, but the closest I could get was getting a bit reckless, skipping class, becoming friends with the group of guys in my high school class. Sure, it came along with being sexually harassed. That happened to me even on my street as a child. It happened to me on the bus in kindergarten. That I could handle. That was just part of the curse of being a girl from what I gathered.

Then I had a child, became an adult overnight. Got a corporate job. I expected to be treated with respect. Like a person who was working. A young mother just trying to make ends meet. Except I still constantly had to battle with my superiors harassing me. This had happened in prior jobs with customers, but never within the web. Not until my first year at a corporate job when my bosses boss walked down the aisle, stopped in my cubicle, started rubbing my shoulders. He would mock me for turning red. I wasn’t red because I was embarrassed though, I think that was where he misunderstood. I was red because I was angry. But I tucked that away because I had to. Years passed, another superior brought me in a conference room. Had me take pictures of him. No, that’s not a lie. These scenarios would happen often, would catch me off guard. No matter how many times they happened I wouldn’t see them coming. The things they would say would shock me. The absolute disrespect of the work I produced made me seething with anger. I kept working because I had to.

Then I met Mike. The boss that inspired me to move into leadership. He told me I was feisty like his sister. Years of harassment in the workplace and having to work twice as hard to get anywhere will do that to you. He told me loudly in the hallway of our building that I made the least amount of money on our team. He told me he slept with 30 women in 30 days. He offered me Valium. I knew how he lost his virginity. He cornered me in rooms for hours and wouldn’t let me leave until I started crying. I told his boss what was happening and this only made things worse for me. Eventually I decided to apply for a leadership role within the same company and got the role on my first time applying. Months later my new boss told me she had to save me, that when she called Mike for feedback he said, “She’s an excitable little girl.” I was 30.

So I spent 5 years in leadership, and leadership comes with a whole other set of stressors. One thing I did not miss was being harassed by men in positions of power. I suppose I thought that I had earned the respect I deserved by now. As a 35 year old woman, who has years and years of experience. A 16 year old son. 5 years of leadership in both sales and service. To my surprise, I was wrong. To my surprise, it wasn’t just the previous company I worked for that had this problem. No, I’m dealing with it again. I’m dealing with it now. Where the men on the team are being treated differently than the women. Where I’m being called “defensive” if I attempt to stick up for myself when being attacked out of nowhere. I could go on and on, but the fact of the matter is I could run circles around my current boss in his position. He hasn’t met with me once in 5 months. He’s lucky I have a good work ethic, but I’ll be damned if he tries to make me feel bad about myself. I’m being compared to another woman on the team of course, I could never be like one of the guys. Both the guys are on the top of the pyramid for results, but come to find out it’s because they’ve been primed. They get the best territories, the best quotas. The women get told they aren’t doing enough. I’ve seen this happen before, and before I got involved. It caused me personal hell. This time I have to handle it differently. I’m not going to try to fight a losing battle. I’m going to smile with the fact that I know I’m 10 steps ahead of him. I also know that I don’t need to respect him to be successful.

Maybe the lesson here is the acknowledgement that this is real. That this is just how it is across the board. That unfortunately for me, I am female. I will never be looked at as strong even though I know I’m tough as hell. I usually am not looked at as intelligent or capable or emotionally stable either. That last one’s hit or miss. All my life I’ve felt like I’ve had to work twice as hard and move half as far. Could it all really be chalked up to me being female? It’s a hard pill to swallow. To know this world bets on me to fail.