Am I Grown?

Am I Grown?

I could think of every cliché in the book to describe the way I'm feeling now, but the pathetic frustration I'm feeling is not very noteworthy. It's only worth writing about so that maybe I'll feel a little less of it, to ease the burden of the frustration combined with angst, worry and overall impatience that have been reigning over my life like a wicked stepsister.
What's wrong with me?
I'm listening to this song by Chrisette Michele called “Another One”. I don't know why this song makes me feel so gritty and emotional. It's probably a combination of the chord progression and certain key phrases
“baby I'm a grown woman, doin' real grown woman things” Am I grown? Absolutely not, but I do feel more like an adult than I used to. . . you know the whole having to make money and support ourselves thing . .. yeah, that pulls at me a bit.
She keeps repeating certain key words that set me off and make me emotional. Stevie Wonder does that to me all the time, certain phrases, like in “Overjoyed” there is a certain chord progression in the beginning of the song that along with the lyric just makes me want to cry rivers of tears. Every single time I listen to it, it happens. I don't know if it happens because I want that emotional release, or because music has always touched a part of my soul that I never could explain.
I remember, when I would take voice lessons, how I would always focus on certain phrases, even if they were slightly less significant to the piece, but because they touched a certain part of me. It was often difficult for me to separate myself from the song I was singing. It still is.
And should we? Should we separate our daily lives from the raw, gutteral, emotional stuff that lives down in our souls, that we keep pushing down until eventually we are flooded with it?
I come back to Chrisette Michele on this unbelievable album . .”epiphany”
“if you wanna cradle me like a little girl, and knock me down, i'm not your possession, I'm a full grown woman, I am not your porcelain doll”
Her lyrics are very “pro-woman” anthem-esque. Sometimes, at least in my life, I feel like I need a pro-woman anthem to sing. Sometimes, I feel like I am surrounded by sucking-thewomanin-programming. We watch these shows on tv, like “Mad Men” where Jon Hamm is a god who treats women like shit, yet we are drawn to them. Why am I drawn to it? It seems foreign to me and I'm intrigued. The truth is, it's not so foreign. I've dated lots of men who have treated me like a second-class citizen, and like the women on that show, i've enjoyed the attention, and not stood up for myself when I needed to. I”m embarassed to say it like that, because I definitely consider myself to be a feminist, but in the heat of the moment, we want that intimacy, and the most wonderful thing in the world is to feel wanted. But how do we feel about ourselves the day after?
I'm married now, so I don't have to worry about the dating scene, but a whole new set of challenges arise, within the confines of normal marriage “stuff”. I just hope I'm strong enough to negotiate it, and to retain a sense of self, and pride, as a woman.