When I hear men yell angrily, it activates every nerve in my body to tell me to run and hide.
I talk about all this stupid shit and I say it doesn’t bother me to talk about it since I can so easily, but I know that I shouldn’t.
I feel so uncomfortable right now, like I’m about to jump out of my skin and shriek and cry. But I’m in a room full of my friends who are trying to sleep, so I can’t just throw my head back and start screaming like I feel compelled to.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been in orange arms and it’s driving me a little crazy. I keep thinking about that other idiot, and I talk about him so much that it’s embarrassing. I don’t want to give him a single thought, but it dominates my mind and all of this verborrhea comes spilling out about Ray this and Ray that and oh haha, what an idiot he is because of this and that and the other thing! And I’m spewing all of this vitriol because my heart is so wounded, because I cared for him so much and realize I’m not even stardust in his universe. I’m not even on the map of the solar system in which he is the center. He doesn’t know how to give a shit about anybody but himself—a cliche at best but the honest truth—and considers one’s ability to wait on another as grounds for love. ”What do you love about me?” I’d ask, searching back then for some semblance of a demonstration of his supposed affection for me. “…The way you treat me,” he finally concluded. “‘The way I treat you’? What about because I’m smart or funny or something like that?”
“Well, lots of people can be smart or funny…”
Oh, okay. So you love me because of what I do for you. Because I’m a good accessory and servant to you. Fuck you, idiot. That isn’t love. That’s convenience. You like having me around because I do shit for you, not because of who I actually am as a human being.
So yeah, I turned your skinny stupid butt down for sex. For once in my fucking life I declined sex because, let’s see, the lump in my breast and urinary incontinence brought on by my stupid birth control—which I took purely for your stupid selfish ass—didn’t have me feeling all too sexy. I was in pain and discomfort and all you could do was pout. I’m really not in the mood. ”No?” NO. Fucking deal with it. Maybe if I got something out of the bargain and you actually turned me on I’d be more compelled to have sex with you. I guess you don’t have a problem sticking yourself into a barely damp bear trap, and I’m such a self-loathing desperate idiot that I let you. But it’s because I see little glimmers of your true spirit, of your seriously broken and insecure, writhing little self inside that big ape shell, and I keep deluding myself into thinking I can draw that you—the real you—out of it. Because you beg for kisses and to make love instead of “fucking”, and even though you’re huge you cling to me like a child when it happens. You want real love so badly and you have no idea where to begin. You don’t even know what it is.
You’re way too much like Madrid for my comfort. Madrid has at least had a little hole bored into him so that he spurts a bit of his real self whether he likes to or not instead of being forced to open up. Under too much pressure, a bit of his humility ekes out. But you haven’t been humbled in fucking years, and the moments in which you could have been soar right over your thick skull. Blowhard fucking idiot.
It’s been so long since I felt those orange arms around me, since I felt safe just being outside, since I felt like people actually gave a shit about me even in the presence of my friends. Listen, I’m sorry I’m not better, you guys. I really am. I keep thinking there are things I can do to fix things, like becoming a DJ or trying to meet all of the people you think are cool, but I need so much closure on this gushing wound and I can’t begin to sew stitches. It’s an ice pick in the aorta that I’ve willed myself not to call him, not to text him, to hide him on facebook, to do everything in my power to do anything but be the one to contact him, and how I haven’t even been a blip on his radar. And it’s eating at me from the inside.
Walking around downtown and all I can think is about how much he’d flap his gums about what a polar bear he is and how great the weather is and how I’m skinny and cold all the time. Sitting and watching ponies while drawing stickers and just imagining his irritation, and maybe him sneaking a peek out of boredom (and maybe secretly watching attentively). Going to a party with intense props and decorations all over the walls and a bona fide chill room, picturing him on one of the inflatable couches waiting for it to be all over. Be in pain. Feel. Get wounded like you’ve wounded me. Bleed as I’ve bled. I’ll melt your hardened heart with the heat of my tears. I’m surprised their salts haven’t crystallized me into your very own Stendhal object of affection yet. Or is it because you lack an imagination entirely with which to think of me as something greater than I am? Perhaps you can’t even process what I’m worth. What am I worth? Idiot, fucking nothing. What can I possibly be worth if I continually close my rusted bear trap on his finger over and over? We’re both deluded fucking fools.
So I talk and talk and bitch and whine and supposedly I’ve now become just like him, some fucking idiot who is proud of her venom. I never wanted to be this way, ugly on the inside too. I want to be a little too timid, not too proud. I want to be a little too quiet, not too loud. I want to be tiny and cute and “put her in my pocket” but I’m this weird plank-like gangly weirdo boy-girl that doesn’t know where the fuck she belongs on the spectrum of anything but inept.
Fell asleep writing this. Bad dreams. Good riddance.
