Stories of resistance

I was teased in school quite a lot. Luckily it never tipped over into sinister harassment and I wasn't bullied systematically, like the worst stories we hear. But it was nevertheless a struggle for me, and something that had a profound effect on my social life and self-esteem. 

Grown ups told me, that I was "fun to tease" and gave me different advice on how to deal with it. Eventhough their intensions where good, the advice was often too akwardly intellectual to make real use of. "Try to ignore it" or "It is because they are envious of you" are difficult to put into practice.

When I turned 9-10 years old, my temper grew "bad". I started to react very loudly and physically to my teasing oppressors and threw a chair after one of them once. It felt great. 

I remember that he grinned at me with a face that was half impressed, half scared of my hidden power. Very quickly, a teacher ran to me, took me by my arm and told me firmly why that kind of behaviour wasn't tolerable! The message was clear: That I wasn't allowed to get that angry, and especially not channel the anger out. 

In my adult years, I begun to discover how this pattern also occurs at a structural level in society. We seem to tolerate huge amounts of oppression - in the form of a hierachic structure that we deem inevitable. But our norms demand us to control our emotions. We are not allowed to react.

I learned to control my temper in social contexts. It's not that I don't get angry anymore, I very often get upset by the dynamics of oppression when I meet them. But over the years, my anger morphed itself into this hard lump of resistance inside me. It is as if I can never get a full release from this feeling, only "blow off steam" once in a while, and always in private. The feeling of resistance has stored itself in my body, in my physical system, as tensions and aches. As something not allowed to come out.

This is what film #2 Fire in my bones will be about. Resistance. It's mental and physical manifestation in us. The form will be a series of intimate "interviews" with different young women, who has been formed by this resistance. 

What I am really curious to hear, is if you have similar stories out there that I might borrow as inspiration for the building of these characters? 

Do you have any stories or observations of a resistance of your own? Do you call it something else? Anything from anecdotes to physical experiences or dreams you had could be incredibly interesting to hear about. Hope to hear from you.

Yours, Trine

ps: catch me here: mothlands@gmail.com