I hate you, bitch.
I know hating people you feel inferior to is a really shitty way to deal with insecurity, but logic and rationality are oftentimes foreign concepts to someone in a position of self hatred.
A rational person would say that the successes of two distinctly different people are not mutually exclusive. A rational person would be able to recognize the intelligence and composure of another woman and not feel threatened by it.
But I am not a rational person.
I once drove six hours to a different state to try and prove to myself that I am capable of going somewhere on my own. I got a flat tire and cried in the trunk of my car for five hours while my dad drove out to help me.
Case in point, rationality escapes me.
When I was fifteen, I thought that the only way to get the boy I liked to like me back was by pretending I wanted to have sex to him.
When I was fifteen, I learned that sex is the direct route to attention.
If you want the attention of a boy, you dangle the idea of sex in front of them.
I’m not kidding, this is infallible.
The problem arises when you inevitably have to give in to the expectation of sex, and shortly thereafter you don’t seem to have any more male friends.
It’s kinda funny how empty you can feel after someone exchanges your body for their lack of interest. It’s kinda funny that I never learned from the multitude of times this happened to me.
See, the worst part about being friends with guys is noticing the girls they check out. I always want to roll my eyes and say something like “Really?” Because it’s always the girls with delicate frames and tame hair, girls with nice skin and unpigmented upper lips, girls who don’t resemble their brothers and are probably really, really fucking nice. Fuck those girls. They’re so nice.
The worst part is that it isn’t their fault that they are looked at like a fucking divine intervention, but I want to blame them anyway. I want to blame them for being something I cannot be; graceful, confident, composed, nice, gentle, interesting, ladylike, pleasant. And the reality is they probably don’t conform to all those shitty ideals anyway, but they can pull it off. I’ve been trying my entire life, and I can’t.
I’m interesting in the way that driving by a burning building is interesting. You’ll slow your car down to watch other people try and salvage the foundation, but your interest is restricted by the understanding that there’s not really anything you can do, and as such you drive on while I turn to ash.
Generally, people are more likely to date girls who are cute and quirky, and not girls who like saying “fuck” and comparing themselves to burning buildings.
But there’s only so many of those nice, cute girls to go around, so lots of times when my friends like one of those spectacular, monumental women, she’s tied up in another relationship and can’t see how good they’d be together, and I get the pleasure of hearing all about how lost she must be and how clueless she is. As if these cute, nice girls are dumb and aloof to their immediate surroundings. Even if that stereotype was true, why the fuck are people so into the idea of a girl who’s oblivious to the world around her? What on EARTH makes that trait desirable?
I can’t speak for all women, but most of the girls I know are hyper aware of their surroundings. We have to be, to survive. You literally cannot go anywhere or do anything as a woman without recognizing every miniscule detail about the world around you.
I would kill for the luxury of not noticing who I’m around or what they might be thinking about me. I would kill to not overanalyze everything from the movement of their eyes to the direction their feet point.
This idea that girls are clueless and just wander around being cute and helpless is a myth, and beyond that it’s fucking degrading.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine commented on the way I never ask for help when I clearly need it. I walked the whole way back from wherever we were contemplating why I do that. It led me to a really upsetting realization.
I am not a cute, aloof girl. Even if I had that sort of nuanced, comforting kind of pretty, I could never pass as unaware. I notice things and I remember them, and I have never seen the appeal of appearing to be less aware than I am. I don’t carry myself with poise, I don’t hold my head above my shoulders. I am often angry, I am often hateful. I don’t like how muscular my back is, from constantly carrying weight I refuse to delegate to others, even when they offer. My arms are the same way. I am not the kind of person who fits easily into an embrace. I feel awkward and angular, too tall to fit in but too slouched to look self assured.
The girl I wish I was carries herself with the kind of grace that draws eyes. I draw glances now because I trip easily on sidewalks and I wear exposing clothing so I can pretend people find me compelling.
The girl I wish I was doesn’t need to be looked at, she doesn’t need to be heard. She doesn’t need her existence to be validated by the eyes of men.
The girl I am now still does. No matter how hard I try to change things, how many times I think to myself, “You’re better than this.”
Maybe I’m not really better than this.
I’m not above jealousy, I’m not above exercising the only power I have to feel wanted. Even if in the end it leaves me lonely, exposed, and hollow.
Old habits die hard.
In a different world, my body is respected. In a different world, my body is not the burning building. Instead it is a forest, or an ocean. Something no one can claim, or conquer, something they can only revel at in silence and awe. In a different world, I would not hate the girl I wish I was because I would not need or want to be anyone else.