You realize your own deception when you seek to decipher the enigma of an index of honor. Honor, after all, is the manifestation of your success and contentment with your victories as you lead a comfortable life that allows your positive traits to shine brighter than your negative ones. But what if Honor was not just a fallacy, but a cost worth paying? And what would be the price to pay? “Oh Lord, the generations that follow, the endless decades, the accumulated grievances!” Everyone clamoring and claiming what they believe they’re entitled to: a heady cocktail of peace and war.

On a good day, I hope my brand of honor and yours are linked to a proper historical lineage tree somewhere, abstractly. If you’re well-fed, with a roof over your head, it’s pointless to feign that economics are immaterial to your “cause”. I have tried to steer clear of various monetary and class discussions all my life, as a creative soul with no ambition to accumulate wealth by exploiting others, let alone to go anywhere. I have infants riding on my future womb. As a woman, I don’t need to be in the mind to become. Perhaps that is why women can never attain full honor: it’s an existence you can opt out of, unlike the concept of honor awarded to men through their ability to opt-in and be celebrated.

Patterns and routines seem absurd when viewed in hindsight and anticipated scenarios. Patience is a form of art; the ability to stand and know when to look and look away from the void is a measure of distress tolerance. And your art can only be as good as your distress. Does art obstruct honor? It seems so: anything that incites doubt must, as it bestows everlasting renewal.

Will I have the patience to determine if my brand of honor is worth the price I’ve paid for it?

For now, I have this: if you calculate the wealth and good deeds necessary to become an honorable woman, the numbers will never add up. I will content myself with being an editor for now, for an audience that isn’t mine to please; who refuse to fade away and burn out. I will find solace among those who deviate from the norm, who intertwine politics and poetry — and maybe even muster a shred of gratitude towards their mothers. I can be their impartial judge, championing fairness. I will improve their prose, and I won’t bother to reveal my tricks or my honor.

I shall be an honorable woman; no matter the price.