“Was I not guilty of letting a boy be drawn to self-hatred?”

 —Sylvia Plath

 “She was steadfast and loyal, and she did not know it.
She thought she was just a lovesick bitch.”

 —Mary Gaitskill

About a month ago, my friend and I went out in Fredonia and the whole night we kept having this epiphany like: We are old. Well, okay, not old, but: Too old for this. Which was both liberating and unsettling for a number of reasons, but before I go any further, let me back track for a second and summarize the context of the situation: My friend was going to Fredonia to meet up with a guy that she knew and kind of liked in college. However, she didn’t want to go alone. So when she asked me to come with I was like, Cool, whatever. Something to do, totally forgetting that I hate “party-school” environments and that every experience I have ever had in Fredonia has always been really bad and a little sexist. But—

“Sure, cool, I’ll come with.”

The night that followed gave me that everyone-in-the-world-is-upside-down-but-me vibe—kind of like the feeling you get when you go to the county fair for some bizarre reason that you can’t totally justify. (Um, alligator jerky?) Something about everything and everyone was just, sort of, one dimensional and kind of tacky, and I was failing to connect to anything. I felt like, all night, I was floating around in a state of disassociation, trying to comprehend everything that was happening without getting pissed off. It was just, the most overtly aggressive and sexist environment I have ever been in, and on top of all that, we had to embark on this ridiculous boy-chase that made me want to stab everyone in the face. (I wish I could use my words a little better for that one, but nope. I wanted to stab everyone in the face and start the whole world over.)

Ultimately, it was a weird night of epiphanies, the big one being: We are too old for this.

This realization eventually led me to consider an infinite number of sexist everyday things that happen and how other girls and myself, condone them or don’t condone them; how we navigate the single world in our twenties and how we succeed and fail to value ourselves; the allure of dudes we hate and this bizarre game we play with our dignity; why it can be fun and why it can hurt; what girls “want” or expect when they say they have a “crush” on someone…Basically, that one stupid night in Fredonia made my thoughts about modern girls and their romantic pursuits scatter all over the place. And then the whole thing was followed by a “romantic” encounter that, if someone had told me was going to happen one year ago, I would’ve laughed in their face and said: Fuck no! But before I get to all that, here is a summarized list of everything that happened in Fredonia that inspired me and my friend to say: We are too old for this.

☂ 1 ☂

It was a cold night and my friend initially got out of the car without her jacket. When she realized how cold it was she, self-consciously, asked, “Should I wear my jacket?” and I said, “Girl, you’ll be more comfortable. Wear your jacket.” However, once we started walking around we realized none of the other girls were operating under the same logic, because none of them were wearing pants—no tights, no leggings, nothing! Just strapless cocktail dresses with the very rare appearance of a cardigan. At one point in the night two girls in dark lipstick and slouchy beanies walked by and I think I gasped as I said it, “EVEN THE GOTH GIRLS AREN’T WEARING PANTS!” And then we went on to have a conversation about how, it wasn’t that we were judging them, or thought they were dressed “skanky”, or something mean and catty. It was just—they weren’t dressed appropriately for the weather and they looked really uncomfortable. Like you would have thought they were all in Miami and not western New York on a cold November night. Bottom line, we just knew all those girls were sacrificing their comfort to look “hot” from the male perspective, like, it wasn’t even a sacrifice for fashion’s sake. And we both just kind of looked at each other like: I’m so glad we are past that. Girl, you look comfortable as hell in your damn jacket. We are too old for this.

☂ 2 ☂

We made the bartender explain the concept of “quad-night” to us at least three times because we thought she was lying, like the notion of four shots for four dollars was just too good to be true. We laughed so hard at ourselves as my friend said, “Are we really that jaded by life?! We can’t even accept that a bar has a drink special?!?!?”

☂ 3 ☂

We went to Sunny’s—a safe haven for underage drinkers—which, should’ve been an automatic: We are too old for this. But anyway, we went to Sunny’s because my friend was trying to track down the guy she was supposed to meet up with, all night. He never texted her when he said he would. He never told her where he was. And this was frustrating because he invited her there. Like, in these situations, there’s a fine line between “communication error” and just being fucking rude, and he was being fucking rude. She went out of her way to go to place where she doesn’t live, because he said he wanted her to. He said he wanted to have drinks with her, and she made the effort to show up because she likes him. And then what? No response to any of her texts until 1 fucking AM—we got there at 9—and all his text said was: At Sunny’s. Something my ex-boyfriend from high school—who was there for some reason?—would comment on like, “He’s at Sunny’s? Catherine, you’re smarter than that. Tell your friend if he’s at Sunny’s he’s not a man.” And I shrugged like, I have to do this for her, as I thought over and over again: We are too old for this. Too old to be dragged around like this. She’s too cool and refined to have a crush on someone who doesn’t value her time.

☂ 4 ☂

When we walked into Sunny’s, we walked into an environment that my friend would later describe as, “very aggressive.” It was like everyone was on some gross combination of Adderall and Fireball, except us, which was probably exactly what was happening. At least twenty bro-dudes rammed their broad ass shoulders into me as they walked by, and all I could think was: Are we even people? There’s enough room in this place to be considerate, be fucking considerate. Then I overheard one guy talking to a group of his friends, saying, “She’s different though, like, sometimes she says things, and they’re… funny.” And I felt like asking him: Do you feel like you’ve been unplugged from the matrix? But then I didn’t because I have a genuine fear of bro-dudes. I knew being sassy with one would probably provoke some kind of self-conscious backlash, like, “shut the fuck up you ugly hyena laughing bitch”, because that is exactly what happened the last time I got sassy with a bro-dude. However, it wasn’t until I became conscious of how I was standing in a corner, clinging to my drink and sheltering the top of it from roofies, that it occurred to me again: I am too old for this—too damn smart for this.

☂ 5 ☂

When my friend finally found the guy she had been looking for, he was bopping around on the dance floor in a suit and tie, and something about his ignorance to just how rude he was being really, really, made me not like him. But I let it go. He came up to my friend and acted like they were just running into each other out of some spontaneous twist of events and still I resisted the urge to be like: Dude, you orchestrated this whole thing! Take some responsibility! Explain your rude ass behavior! See, I let it go, and it was fine. They did their thing and I tried conning some bro-dude into giving me his bomber hat. It was fine! But then 1:50 rolled around, and my friend was buying shots when her guy suddenly vanished. She looked at me and said, “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. Is this weird? I just feel like he should be a little more attentive, but, I guess it’s possible that I misinterpreted something or…” Everything she said about the situation was addled with so much self-doubt and all I was thinking was: No, you are not misinterpreting anything. He’s a fucking douche. But I didn’t say that because I understand that, in these situations, it’s really easy when you’re on the outside looking in to just call it like you see it: DOUCHEBAG! Unfortunately, when you’re the one with the crush on the douche it’s always easier to question yourself than it is to accept that someone really is that inconsiderate. You’ve got your love-lenses on and you’re not mentally prepared to accept that this person, who you admire, is actually really careless. So I kept reassuring her for her sake. But then I watched him reemerge behind her back. I watched him take the shot that she bought without saying a word to her. And then I watched him disappear again. I don’t think he thought either of us noticed. But I noticed, and that was enough. Sometimes you watch a person do a tiny thing like that, and you realize it’s a summary of their entire character. After that, I couldn’t give him the benefit of the doubt. I immediately thought: You’re a sneaky asshole. You’re old enough to know that you’re being inconsiderate. That’s all I need to know about you before I say—you don’t deserve my friend. She was considerate enough to come here. Considerate enough to wait. Considerate enough to not tell you just how inconsiderate you are. She’s too good for you and you’re a coward.

☂ 6 ☂

After we went outside. I didn’t say anything to her about what he did because I was trying my best to be sensitive to her love-lenses. I watched her text him feverishly, and all I could think was: Shit. I would have been so done a long time ago. How is she still texting him? We could be guzzling quads and laughing at bro-dudes right now. It was just obvious that she liked him more than she was willing to admit because that is the only possible explanation for why she never said: Fuck you. Anyway, we watched him run away across the street and into a house with a posse of girls on the verge of hypothermia in their cocktail dresses. “I just want you to know that we just watched that happen,” I emphasized, “he really just did that.” But it was no use. She waited until he finally texted her back like “Oops, lol, *winky face*, you can come upstairs.” And I wanted to stab myself and her and him and everyone, like let’s just end this whole thing like a Shakespearean tragedy. I. Am. Done. It was killing me to watch her, let him, make her wait. I wanted to pry her phone from her fingers and text him back in a fury: I think you take advantage of the fact that a lot of girls will question their own behavior and perceptions a thousand times before they will ever question yours—YOU HAVE THE PERSONALITY OF AN ADDIDAS SANDAL! WE’RE TOO YOUNG AND RESTLESS FOR THIS!!!

☂ 7 ☂

When we got into the apartment, we walked into a room full of dudes talking over each other, and girls—probably because they liked a guy—lying around and looking bored as hell, waiting. Just waiting. All of them were sitting next to their “chosen” guys with this look of expectation on their faces like something more was supposed to be happening. And I felt like forming some kind of union with them where I sat them all down and explained: What’s going to happen is he’s going to ignore you all night. And then he is going to try to have bad sex with you when no one is looking. I think I actually cringed when one girl tried to contribute to the guys’ conversation and they all just ignored her like: Oh, that must have been the wind. I was half-asleep when one guy finally asked me who I was, and I’m pretty sure he only did it because I had resting bitch face. “Who are you? You’re like, up here right now.” He made an upward gesture with his hand when he said “up here” and what he was trying to imply was that I was being an uppity bitch—I get that a lot from bro-dudes. It’s a defense mechanism: Be as unapproachable as possible and you won’t even have to entertain his bullshit. God! It was just something about all those bored girls, lying around in their cocktail dresses and covered in goose bumps, waiting; something about my friend, waiting, all night—for a text, for a glance, for a conversation—that was either not going to happen, or, would ultimately be unsatisfying, that made me want to pick every girl in the room up by the scruff of her neck and say: We are leaving! This is rude! We are going to drink quads and laugh at everything and then over-tip the female bartender like a bad Dane Cook joke and it’s going to be more fulfilling than this. We are too old to be wasting our youth, waiting for our dumb “crushes” to want to get to know us.

☁︎

A few days after the Fredonia boy-chase, my friend asked me to get a drink with her because she finally comprehended everything that had happened and wanted to talk about it. She said, “I just don’t know what to do. I’m glad the whole thing happened because now it’s like: Okay, now I know what to expect from you. Fine. But I also kind of think he should know that what he did wasn’t okay. I want to ask those rhetorical questions, like: Do you think that was good? You really feel okay about how you acted?”

And I told her that I understood the feeling, and then I told her, “Don’t even bother.” I said, “From what I’ve learned, you can’t teach an adult how to be considerate…or self-aware. You just can’t. You can’t control people, and you hurt yourself more when you try and you don’t get the response you want. I know it’s driving you crazy, but just don’t even talk to him. It’ll probably just give him some displaced ego boost, and he’ll make you feel guilty for confronting him.”

Then I added, “I think what really bugged me is like, he is twenty fucking four—take some control over the situation you created! He invited you, what if you had gone there on your own?! He should have felt some obligation to actually follow through and have one drink with you—one real conversation—because he said he would.” Then I started to say: BE A MAN! But I stopped myself, and thought for a moment, because I hate that phrase. I think a man can be whatever he wants to be as long as he’s a good person. So I re-tracked the statement, and replaced it with, “You know, fucking grow up. Be decent.”

☁︎

I initially decided to write this essay because, recently, I caught some feelings. (Welcome to the millennial generation, where we “catch” feelings instead of having them in the first place.) But I caught some feelings for someone who I thought I hated, but apparently I don’t, and now a major topic of discussion between me and my friends is how we hate having crushes because they make us feel gross.

So, so, so, gross.

Being a girl with a crush is like, having a really nasty scab that you can’t quit picking at. Like you just sit around all day examining your nasty scab until you can’t take it anymore, so you start making all your friends look at your nasty scab as you ask an onslaught of self-conscious questions about it like, “Does this shit look infected?”

Or at least, that’s how it feels when you have a crush on someone you hate, which is my current dilemma. He fucking tricked me okay! Dude was persistent. I can’t even remember why I used to hate him, I think he called one of my friends a ditz or something, and after that, he just took the form of everything I don’t like about men—something that made me face-blind to him for an entire year. Seriously. One time, I called him a “that” to his face. I looked at him, and said it like a bad taste in my mouth, “Oh…that.” Another time, he said my name, and I just threw him the Jenna Marbles “face” like:

and then I ran away. Recently he texted my friend for my number, and she replied with “1-800-YOU-WISH”. Then he added me on Snapchat and even the little ghost next to his name looked like it knew how much I hated him:

Basically, I dragged this guy through the mud all because he called my friend a ditz once—and I’m pretty sure he was the mastermind behind an infamous string of eggplant emojis that triggered a psychotic break in me like, “WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR PROBLEM?!”…but he has a selective memory and he’ll never admit to any of it. So…I’m in a sixth grade romance and my name is Helga Pataki.

Anyway, after the 1-800-YOU-WISH incident, he finally just came up to me like a human—the last time he tried to communicate feelings he did it by hitting me in the face with a coaster—and, with a little bit of humiliation, said, “I just think you’re cute, and I wanted to talk to you.” And all I could think was: Oh, fuck you. Don’t make me empathize with you. But I did, and with that I thought: Okay you’ve earned it, I’ll entertain this. And the moment I let my guard down he became the first person I’ve laughed with for a stupid amount of time in ages, and then I heard myself saying it out loud, “Gross, I fucking like you.”

Genuinely, I’m annoyed that it happened—see the scab analogy—because it was a lot easier to hate him than it is to like him. Like, now I have romantic feelings for someone who I’d always suspected was a “bad” person, or more specifically, a type of man that I don’t naturally trust, and this leaves a lot of room for confusion: Does this shit look infected?

I should probably elaborate on the whole calling-my-friend-a-ditz story if this is going to make any sense. But the night I met him, which was probably about a year and a half ago, he called my friend a ditz after what had been a horrible night to begin with—so I want to emphasize that I was more irritable than usual. Anyway, he called her a ditz behind her back after she rejected him, and it rubbed me the wrong way because it seemed like he was only insulting her to compensate for his disappointment. Like you can’t aggressively pursue a girl and then the moment she’s like, Nah, be like: Whatever, you’re kind of a ditz anyway. It’s a very elementary sort of logic, and it was especially annoying to me after an onslaught of annoying things had already happened. So I got a little confrontational and said, “You do realize she graduated from college with a 4.0, she’s a thousand times smarter than you’ll ever be and you’re just bitter. You don’t know her, so please, shut the fuck up.” And he looked really taken aback before he responded, “Wow, you’re really mean.”

And in retrospect, I agree.

I can be pretty mean…

to certain men.

With certain men, I just can’t hold back. When you’re someone like me, someone who reads about social issues, especially feminism, you’re very aware of those tiny subconscious everyday prejudices that certain men exercise against women, and it’s hard not to be angry, and yes, a little mean. It’s hard to not to write a mean essay about a guy who gave your really kind and smart friend the run-around when all she did was exactly what he asked her to do; it’s hard not to have mean thoughts about a guy who is genuinely shocked to have met a girl who says “funny things”; it’s hard not to place a presumptuous hand over your drink in a club full of guys who must understand that they have a natural physical advantage over you, and still, ram into you as hard as they can because they want you to move; it’s hard not to put your resting bitch face on when you’re in a room full of guys who ignore the only girl who tries to contribute to what should be a fun conversation among peers; it’s hard not to put an ultra negative vibe up against those same guys when you notice all those bored girls who admire them, just waiting for them, in uncomfortable dresses they wouldn’t be wearing if it wasn’t for them. Bottom line: It’s hard not to be mean—to not hold a grudge against—a guy who calls your wicked intelligent friend a ditz just because she won’t hook up with him.

It’s hard to trust this type of man, and it’s even harder when you can’t control the fact that some confused part of you kind of likes him.

Hence: 1-800-YOU-WISH…

Or not.

Or yes.

Or maybe.

So call me maybe.

No!

Yes.

 No!

☁︎

I think some people think I hate men. Which is very, very, untrue. I wouldn’t spend this much time analyzing and criticizing them if I didn’t admire them a shit ton—which, I do. I’m like, one of those annoying doe-eyed girls who says stupid cliché things like, “I have many soul mates.” I write about and for men, constantly. Basically, I think most men are majestic creatures who smell really good and create the noise I find fascinating. But what I don’t like is that—some men—make me feel small and insignificant, like my having a brain and depth is something to be ashamed of. Or like I’m foolish to believe I possess these things in the first place. See, not all men, but enough men, have made me feel this way and so, it’s not that I hate men, it’s just that—I’ve learned to distrust them in everyday exchanges and relationships. For example:

I don’t trust them to not take advantage of me.

I don’t trust them to not treat me like a novelty; to not use me as an ego boost, or a pawn, or a prop, or some blank template to project whatever they think I’m supposed to be onto.

I don’t trust them to withhold cruel judgments in the moments when I’m primal and not ideal.

I don’t trust them to not underestimate me.

I don’t trust them to say what they mean—to be honest, even at the expense of my feelings; to not be manipulative in conversations about emotions and expectations.

I don’t trust them to respect my time, to fully comprehend that I have a very real life, and very real goals, and very real things to do, too.

I don’t trust them to not minimize, or make a joke of, what I’ve been through, to not use what I believe in, and what matters to me, as some “fun” topic for debate.

I don’t trust them to wonder who I am when they’re not around the same way I wonder who they are when I’m not around.

And I don’t trust them to understand why this makes me act bitter and jealous in a way that I can’t always explain.

☁︎

“Honestly, I used to think you were a joke who was fucked up all the time,” says my Hate-Crush. I resist the urge to respond like, Well that perception is a two-way fucking street, and instead I surrender, “I am fucked up all the time.” Because, honestly, we could do this all night:

You’re the joke.

No. You’re the joke.

And, anyway, I know I’m not a joke. I know there’s more to me than that. I don’t need to waste time convincing him to change his perspective by saying things like, Really? Am I a joke? Or is it that you couldn’t figure me out so you just put an unflattering label on it and called it a night?

Because earlier in the week, before this conversation, I walked out on him and I think it blindsided him a little bit. It was one of those situations where I thought: Okay, I had a good time with you once; I would like to do it again. So I met up with him for drinks and it wasn’t like he did anything overtly terrible, it was just, those subtle inconsiderate things that some guys do that I know all too well. Those subtle things that imply: I do not value your time. This doesn’t mean as much to me as it does to you.

First of all, I kind of got the vibe that he’d initially come there with another girl and then just sort of, nudged her off the face of his earth to hang out with me. Which is pretty uncool. I don’t find guys ditching other girls for me flattering. It just makes me wonder: What am I doing with a person who would do that to someone? I’m not special. He’ll eventually do it to me too. Bottom line: It makes me question the integrity of my character. So. That was one cryptic situation that had my intuition nudging me to go. Then it was fine for a little bit, we talked…until he was abruptly like, “Be right back, watch my cell phone,” and then he ran off to play a game of pool which is not a “be right back” kind of hiatus. And ultimately, it’s just rude. Like: Hey, I know you came out to see me, but please do me a favor and watch my things while I go do what I’d rather be doing.

Anyway, I remember waiting with his cellphone and thinking about how me and my friend ran around Fredonia all night looking for that idiot when we could have had a way better time hanging out without him. I started to consider how I was waiting for something I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted. Then I thought something really nerdy like: I could be reading a really good book right now. Until finally, after five minutes of staring at his cellphone, I thought: I am too old for this. I’ve done the pretty girl in the corner thing and I’m bored with it. Getting to know someone should be fun, it shouldn’t make you feel like shit. This is making me feel like shit. Stop waiting for him to want to get to know you. Quit picking at your nasty scab and wondering why it hurts.

And with that I got up, walked over to him, said, “This is rude; I’m leaving,” and walked the fuck out.

☁︎

Of course the next day he was all like: Why did you leave me? And I was just like, Why did I leave you? Why did you leave me!! *cue Justin Bieber* WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!

These types of confrontations with guys where the main mystery is: Why are you mad at me? are always kind of comical because there’s always this implication that women and what we want is just SO complicated. When really, I don’t think what we want from our “crushes”, or who we like, is ever actually that complicated. Believe it or not, sometimes we mean it when we say we don’t want a boyfriend—or at least, it’s not our main motive when we’re first getting to know someone.

I honestly believe Lana Del Rey’s “Born to Die” is just one summary of what girls expect from their “crushes”, like: “Don’t make me sad / Don’t make me cry… / Keep making me laugh… / Let me kiss you” the end. IT’S NOT THAT COMPLICATED! And all I was trying to communicate when I left my Hate-Crush was: I want to waste time with you—not because of you. Life’s too short to spend time pining and losing your sense of self-worth for someone that might not be all that great to begin with: Don’t want no paper gangster!

Basically, this is what I “mean”: All I’m expecting is for you to want to get to know me the way I want to get to know you. I’m not asking you to slit your wrists or anything. My emotions are not that drastic and you are not that great. But you might be—to me—somewhere down the line, and the main point is, I’m not asking for anything I’m not willing to give—but, I think you kind of are. And I’m not cool with being taken advantage of like that. Not anymore. So don’t waste my time, because there’s still so much out there that I could be admiring, and I’m too old to be wasting my youth waiting for someone to see what I see. Now *semi-sarcasm* pay attention to me.

☁︎

“Well…” my friend begins, laughing, “The heart wants what it wants.”

Her response to my recounting of the events leading up to my Hate-Crush has me retaliating like, “Do not compare this to Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber!! GROSS!!!”

“But I’m serious!” she says, “I know you can’t help it, and I’m just saying of all people, I didn’t expect…that.”

I appreciate her allusion to my former sass because, at this point, I’ve temporarily lost that spark. Like, Goddamit, why?! Let me have this one thing!

Hate-crushes never let you have this one thing and that thing is your dignity. Instead they mind-fuck you with apologies that seem sincere and, ultimately, cancel out your initial decision to reject them. “I’m sorry, it wasn’t my intention to make you feel like an idiot,” he says, and this shouldn’t be good enough, not if you want to win the game. But you don’t have a proper understanding of the rules, so you fumble and wind up tossing your dignity back in his direction because: The heart wants what it wants.

Now can we just take a minute to talk about how much I hate that song and music video?

The first time I heard / saw Selena Gomez’s “The Heart Wants What It Wants”, I got annoyed because I found the whole thing pathetic and self-indulgent. Like: First of all, Emily Dickinson said ‘The heart wants what it wants’, not you Selena. Second of all, the person you are publicly crying over is Justin Bieber. Stop taking him seriously! Nobody else does…But then my train of thought shifted and I realized that I was harshly judging Selena Gomez’s public display of heartbreak because there wasn’t a naked girl swinging on a wrecking ball to distract me. It was crude and, ultimately, just sad. A sad sob-fest over Justin Bieber, like: “Oh, that.” And I couldn’t stand that a huge part of myself—one that I wasn’t dealing with—could relate to it. I didn’t want to deal with the fact that I, myself, have probably also looked that pathetic, and self-indulgent, and dumb, over a really flakey dude who only ever liked me when it was convenient. Which is a really hard thing for me to accept and an even harder thing for me to watch.

It’s hard to watch someone obsess over and pick at something that looks really gross and like it really hurts. This is why I wanted to rip my friend’s cellphone out of her hands during the Fredonia boy-chase; it’s the only reason I wanted to drag all those cocktail-dress-wearing girls away from their terrible, boring, fuckboys. When I looked at them I felt like I was looking at myself, and all I wanted to do was make them do what I can’t do for myself. I wanted to make them happy; to make them stop; to make them value their own time, to make them value themselves. Because I know how it feels to be unhappy with a “romantic” situation and emotionally incapable of stopping it. I know how it feels to not value my own time by waiting for a guy who would never, in a million years, do the same thing for me. I know how it feels to have a dude—who I admire—push down my pillars of confidence like dominoes and then, to just, not even react; to just let it crush me. And I wouldn’t wish those feelings on my worst enemy. I would look at her and say: Stop doing this to yourself.

☁︎

Maybe I’m just self-conscious, but I’m having a hard time ending this. I’ve rewritten the ending at least three times now, and it’s a struggle, because every single one is mean—beyond reason—to my Hate-Crush.

And I don’t want to be mean beyond reason!

I can’t be mean at the expense of being honest!

It’s my job as a writer to not take advantage of you as a reader and every single ending I’ve written before this one was like that one T-Swift lyric: So casually cruel in the name of being honest. Like, every ending I wrote before this one was manipulative; cruelty under the guise of honesty—just compensation for my own fears and for how I have zero control over those fears; how I have no control over the number of times I rip my nasty scab off and watch it grow back…

Ugh.

Just.

One half of me believes I’m at the point in this game of dignity tossing where I’m starting to value myself less. One half of me believes my Hate-Crush is chiseling away at my confidence the same way he weaseled his way into my life—subtly. One of half of me believes he doesn’t deserve my time and admiration because, when I’m with my friends, I hear myself sayings things like, “He tried to quarantine me in a room—with Fox News on and no remote—because he didn’t want me to hear what him and his friends were saying,” or, “He half-jokingly called me a bitch for walking out on him,” or, “He wouldn’t kiss me in the morning,” or, “There’s always this vibe like: I want you here for now, but you can’t stay,” or, “He tells me he wants to do one thing, but never follows through—hanging out is always spontaneous and never exactly when I want to,” or, “I feel like my existence only occurs to him when I’m standing right in front of him,” out loud, and something about it makes me wonder if I’ve been rationalizing a lot of situations that are very black and white. See, incidents like these, in isolation, never seem that bad, but then you hear them recounted—one after the other—and suddenly it’s like: Oh shit, I’m being played.

Like: Maybe I should’ve done a little more than walk out on him one time. Maybe I should’ve walked out on him every time. Or maybe I should’ve just never let this happen in the first place…

And then that one mean streak in me starts to get defensive and self-conscious like: How could I let this happen? Am I not guilty of letting a boy be drawn to self-hatred? How am I blaming myself for someone else not being all that considerate of a person? It’s fucking backwards! He should be addled with self-doubt right now. He should feel guilty. He should be forced into bouts of unflattering introspection. Not me, someone whose only intention was to get to know someone else—to have fun and give away time and affection. Why should I be ashamed of that? I’m fucking not. I’m not ashamed of having genuine feelings. Like sorry for my fucking pulse, but not really: I am steadfast and I am loyal, but I don’t always know it. Sometimes I think I’m just a lovesick bitch. But I’m not—I’m not a joke! What I am is decent!!!!

And then the other half of me, the much less judgmental and self-righteous one, is just like: Stop. Cut a dude some fucking slack. Which, everything in me immediately seizes up and retaliates against this notion, like: NO! NEVER! TOO MANY PEOPLE ALREADY CUT MEN SLACK! FJDKHGJKDSHGJKD!!!!!!!!!

But after the first ending of this post was written, one of my friends said, “Maybe when he separated (Earlier I used the word ‘quarantined’ because I’m an asshole who exaggerates, whoops) you from his friends it was his way of respecting you; it’s not the right way at all, but, you are intimidating. He probably just didn’t want you to be around people who were going to upset you. He probably really just doesn’t know what to do with someone like you,” and it helped me reign in some of my judgments, just the tiniest bit. Just enough to make me realize that: Holy shit, maybe I’m the one who’s compensating for something now.

Because, okay, my Hate-Crush isn’t bad. I don’t think he’s a bad person. I don’t even actually hate him—I like him—I think he’s funny. I also think he’s pretty cunning. I think he’s more sociable and likable than me. And I envy that shit. Okay. It’s over. I said it. And I hate that I like him, and I hate how out of control that makes me feel, because: Like me back, dammit. See, my ego is a tricky girl. I can’t quite figure her out. Sometimes she needs to be and should be a raging lunatic, and other times, she needs to just chill. And when it comes to this whole thing, she needs to just chill, like: Chill Felicia. Okay. *Trying to channel my unbiased un-self-righteous side*

It’s just…this other half of me, which is starting to feel like the honest half of me, realizes that the lesson in this whole thing is—my fear of being taken advantage of by men is so great that I actually push men that I really like away, all the time. It gets to this point where I feel so out of control of my emotions that I slap on my ice queen face and turn whoever I’m interested in into a sociological experiment, because: I don’t want to hurt. I don’t want to watch my friends hurt. Or other girls hurt. I want to avoid this. All of it. Go the fuck away. *Jenna Marbles Face*

Do guys experience this confusing, very invasive, feeling? Does their sense of autonomy feel that fragile? I just don’t trust that it does. And I know my suspicions are unfair, but I can’t help it. It’s a genuine fear at this point in my life. I have so many firsthand experiences to back it up, and I know that doesn’t make it right…but, damn. I really would stop it if I could.

It’s exhausting being this suspicious of men and this possessive of my autonomy. All. The. Time. And I don’t know how to convey that to anyone without sounding combative. Which is probably why my G.D. mouth always feels like it’s wired shut around men that I really, really, admire. Like, I don’t know how to say: I really, really, really, want to get to know you. But I’m afraid you’ll take advantage of me. So. I get mean. And then I get nice. And then I get mean. And then I get nice. And I don’t speak up when I should. Or I don’t just say what I mean or want or need. Because, I don’t trust you to understand.

Maybe this is why being a girl with a crush feels so gross.

This not trusting happiness when that happiness is related to a guy.

Because guys, so often, won’t let us stay.

Or they don’t text back.

Or they don’t do what they say they will.

And you rarely get an explanation why and that shit stings

every time.

So.

I don’t know how to end this…