You can have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a woman of everything, she's no longer in your power. – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

It’s like a reoccurring dream of a time, and a place, I once was. My life, played out in my mind. All the mistakes that I can’t amend and decisions that I can’t change. Everything I’m ashamed of, and things I don’t regret. People who came and went, like fireflies in the dusk. It all comes back to me in disarray – nothing in its proper place.

My husband was a businessman. When he woke up, I made him breakfast. When he went to work, I cleaned and dusted until everything was immaculate. Sometimes I went out for groceries – but that was only if they were a necessity in the meal I was planning for him. My husband came home and I was there for him to talk at, adding in none of my own grievances. I served him his dinner, he remarked on how it should be better. We had a routine. It worked, for a time…until I bought the book. The Feminine Mystique – an audacious title for an eye-opening book. An innocent looking cover disguised the incriminating words you would find inside. If I hadn’t bought the book, everything would be so different. I don’t know what made me buy it, nor did I know why I read it before hiding it from my husband. Everything changed – I began to ask myself, “Is this all?”

Weeks passed. Everywhere I went I seemed to hear of more feminist marches, more votes and new laws that citizens wanted approved. It was like I became a magnet to all things I was never supposed to think about – every little thing was drawn to my attention. My husband continued our routine as if I wasn’t twitching at every news flash, oblivious to my shifting attitude towards household duties. He didn’t notice the cold manner in which I soothed him when he came home from work any more than he noticed the light appearance of dust settling cheekily on the mantle piece. To him, everything was the same as it had always been.

I remember a time when I didn’t question the rights of a man to hold domination over his wife, but that was before. Before I realised how assymmetrical the roles of men and women were. He didn’t have to wake up early in the morning to have breakfast ready for me before I go to work, nor did he have to wait patiently at home, preparing meals and cleaning for when I came home. Why didn’t he ever offer to take my shoes off, or rub my shoulders?

My first march was a spontaneous decision. The quiet sound of marching had reached my ears and the faint hum of a rhythmic chant echoed through the streets. My heart beat with anticipation. I knew I had an obligation to be home when my husband finished work. I was supposed to live by him, obey him and do the best by him. My actions reflected on his ability to control me. As the reverberation of the procession came closer my fingers twitched, my mind torn between duty and desire. I didn’t want to disgrace him, but a dead leaf might as reasonably demand to return to the tree. I thought about The Feminine Mystique. About how we were taught to pity the neurotic, unfeminine women who wished to become writers or doctors or presidents. “Man-haters”, the men would call them. Men, I knew, would have abused some of them. Boys, even, led astray by their fathers and role models. Yes, some of the women would be men haters.

Women passed by, in small and big clumps, holding up signs with demands for respect and equality. Their chanting was completely jumbled and without rhythm up close, but there was a sense of unison in the way they all marched as one, fighting for the same cause. I merged with the crowd. I ignored the uncomfortable jostling. This was my independence.

My second march was less of a spontaneous action. I knew exactly what I was doing, even if I didn’t know what I wanted to achieve by it. The adrenaline rush I got was amazing. Doing something forbidden, disobedient and wild made me feel free. I wrote reports of feminist actions and sent them to newspapers under anonymous. They were published under a reporter’s name. Plagiarism is illegal, but my opinions were out there. People were informed of the reasons that these ‘uneducated wild-women’ were protesting.

Despite the things I wrote and all the campaigns I participated in, I was still a housewife. I still made my husbands meals, and I was still an object for him to talk at when he got home. I don’t believe now that he was oblivious as to what I was doing, but I accept that he just didn’t want to think of his wife as one of those women. My husband put up with five years of my opinions. I know he just didn’t want to face the humiliation he would feel if the public new he couldn’t control his wife.

The day I walked out, a silver moon, like a new-stamped coin, rode triumphant in the sky. I gave my name to the newspaper in place of the anonymous reporter and completed a course in journalism. Much has changed since my first march, but much has stayed the same. We live in an age where masses of people come and go across a hostile planet, desolate and violent. Refugees, emigrants, and exiles come and go. Racism, sexism, domination and minority groups remain. We are a tragic body. But I love my past. I love my present. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I have it no longer.