Not a Day Without a Line

"Nulla dies sine linea." Not a day without a line.

The phrase is attributed by Pliny the Elder to Apelles, who was a painter a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Actually it was here on earth, but anyone who knows me knows my first full-length novel was a Star Wars fan fiction.

But I digress.

Apelles said this famous line in regards to his work as a painter. From what I understand, in an effort to come as close to perfection as possible, he painted every day even if it was just to go over lines already laid down. Click here  to find out more about Apelles from (what I think) is a reputable source.

Over the years this idea has been attributed to other artistic lines of work, such as writing. Not a day without a line isn't as literal as it once was; to the writer in me, it means a line of sentence, or, better yet, a paragraph. At the moment I don't write every day, but that is something I am trying to change.

This blog will touch on many things that mean a lot to me, and plenty of them will be controversial. I have been silent in my beliefs for going on my entire life. As such, it is past time when I stood up and spoke up.

This isn't an easy thing for me to do. As the youngest of four and the only girl in a strict Christian household, I often felt that I had no voice. Oh, I could shout and scream, but when it came to making important decisions, those were often taken from me. I will get into that a little more as this blog progresses.

I learned early on that being a boy was a better life. My parents were overprotective of me and our religion taught that women were to be silent. Seen, but not heard. If a woman wanted to argue with a leader in the church, she had to go to her husband and have him present the argument. She could not teach unless it was to other women or children, and the leaders in our church took that a step further to say that a woman could not lead singing. See (in no particular order) Ephesians 5, 22-33; 1 Corinthians 11:3; 1 Timothy 3, 1-16; Genesis 3, 16 for references to my above statements.

I was maybe six years old when I learned that I was "less than" because of my gender. I have always loved to sing, and I wanted nothing more than to lead singing in church like my daddy did. I can't remember who I approached about this desire, but I do remember being told that it wasn't possible. That I should go help out in the kitchens or in the nursery instead.

Six years old and I learned that a woman's place is in the kitchen or with the children, and that was all that she was destined for.

I grew up refusing to learn how to cook, and shying away from children. To this day, kids intimidate me! My brothers would tease me because I didn't know how to cook. I remember one Christmas in particular when we were teenagers, they told me that I was getting a stove for Christmas and that was it; so that I would learn to cook. I didn't, of course, (get a stove, that is) but the memory of their teasing sticks in my mind.

This is what a girl should do. Why aren't you doing it?

That's not what they were saying. At least, I don't think so. But the underlying societal pressure was there nonetheless. Women and men have always had "certain roles," and since that day when I was six years old, I have always identified more with the male gender. They got to do the fun stuff, after all. They got to walk down to go get the mail without having someone either a) watch them or b) go with them. They got to lead singing, teach, all the important and fun things that I wanted to do, but was told that I couldn't.

I'd like to say that I showed them. I'd love to say that, as a child, I went out and did all the things that I was told not to, or that I wasn't capable of doing. Unfortunately, I turned inward the pain of being told that my gender made me less than. I did everything that I was supposed to do (I was a dutiful daughter of God) except to embrace being who and what I am.

And yet...I was the first person on my father's side and in our immediate family to earn a bachelor's degree. At eighteen, I went away to college with that very mission in mind. I cared what I majored in to a degree, but the overall quest was to go down as the first in my immediate family as well as on the one side, with a higher level of education.

It was the first time in my life that I had ever done something just for me.

And it was an incredible, eye-opening experience that I wholeheartedly enjoyed.

Since then, I have struggled with religion to a point where I shirked it completely. I struggle daily to be true to myself as a woman, and to remember that it's okay to be my gender; that it's not a bad thing to be a girl.

And that, in a nutshell, is what this blog is about. Learning to accept myself for what I am. It isn't as easy as it sounds, but the path so far has definitely been worth it.