peaches

I bought canned peaches at safeway the other day, because I don’t eat enough fruits here and it’s honestly pretty depressing. It’s hard to stay upbeat and happy a lot of the time, but I’m trying. Canned peaches were a step in the right direction. When I was fourteen, there was a season I would eat three or four peaches a day. It was when I ran cross country, when I had just started high school, when I could smoke half the guys in my grade in the mile while simultaneously braiding my hair.

It got exhausting, always trying to compete. I didn’t really think about it until tonight, after our weekly intramural futsal game, when everyone offered congratulations and praise to the guy who had scored the most goals. Because this is how men work. They can only ever see the obvious, and it’s not entirely their faults because it’s how they’re socialized, but I’m really fucking tired of giving them that excuse. I’m tired of defending them in groups, tired of defending myself for hanging out with them, tired of being around them and seeing how little they see every single fucking day.

I can’t even count how many times I have had to move over on the street to prevent someone from walking straight into me, how many times I have had to cross roads on my own or go down better lit paths because they don’t notice when there’s threatening people in the way, or when there are corners people could jump out of. They live oblivious to all this, and it makes me understand why most girls like to hang out with other girls. But I have never really wanted that.

Since I was a kid I’ve always wanted to be the best at everything. I wanted to be the smartest, the fastest, the most popular. I was always in the top five mile times at my school up through eighth grade. I got the best grades, and I’ve always been that kind of person that everyone either knows or knows about. And it’s never enough. It wasn’t until we were walking out of our futsal game, and these guys I’ve been on a team with for several months were congratulating a stranger on his goals, that I realized how fucking frustrated and let down and tired I am. I assisted 6 out of the 7 goals we scored, and I scored the other one. Those goals would have been nothing without me, without everyone else on the field, but they don’t see that. This is a stupid instance, but sometimes it takes something dumb to recognize the bigger picture. And that’s what this is.

How many times have I carried the people around me and had that weight gone unrecognized? How many times have I had to reach out, initiate conversations, get phone numbers, apologize for being too much, apologize for doing not enough, apologize for existing because I don’t exist in the exact right way I am supposed to exist and holy fuck I am so fucking tired of it. I walk myself to safeway twice a week and I carry my own fucking groceries and I get my own drunk ass to dinner and I will do everything for myself from here on out because I’m done giving men the satisfaction of doing anything for me, without recognizing how much I do for them.

Don’t tell me not to generalize, don’t say “It’s a joke,” “he isn’t ill intentioned,” I don’t fucking care. Maybe for once consider the impact of what you say/do and not the intention. If the world was defined by intentions no one would ever be to blame, but I still find myself crying myself to sleep some nights, angrily scrubbing the skin off my body some nights, screaming at everyone every night because I don’t know how to make it any more clear.

I have spent my entire life trying to be “one of the guys” like somehow being the ‘cool girl’ will make me more respectable, like somehow because other women don’t really accept me, men will. I can feel the internalized sexism in the way I put other women down, in the way I try to seal myself up, the way I see caring for other people as some sort of weakness.

And none of it ever matters. No matter how many assists I have, no matter how many goals I make, no matter how many times I carry the weight no one notices or cares or recognizes. I will spend my life trying to be something I can’t, because I was born without the privilege of ignorance. I was born without a penis and without respect, always having to do twice as much, work twice as hard, to get half the recognition. I am always the person putting in the most and getting the least out, from the time I was a kid, and I just never thought about it until right now.

My identity is reduced to trivial things; peach girl, with the low rice purity score, loud and crazy and wild and maybe the only reason I am any of that is it’s the only way they recognize me. I never grew up and learned to be noticed in a good way. I grew up learning that I had to shout to be heard, that no matter how certain I was someone would always fact check me, that even when I was proven right there was probably a reason why, like my truth is circumstantial, like my experience is circumstantial, like I am circumstantial.

I don’t know what else to say. I’m fucking tired. Men won’t read this, and if they do they probably won’t understand and will feel triggered by the word ‘privilege’. I feel like I could say a lot more but I really want to go to sleep. Peace out.