Emotional Homework

I have been sitting at my desk, trying to write. I made some revisions to an essay I sent to a friend. Specifically, I have been going through my writing folder looking for pieces I have written about a man I used to know. Don’t let me shock you. There is purpose to this emotional homework. I found the following scene I had written in 2013 and my stomach began to hurt.

 

“What are you doing?” he asked.

 

I am going to regret answering the phone.

 

“About to leave work,” I said. “What’s up?”

 

“I was about to put a couple burgers on the grill,” he said. “You wanna come over for a bit?”

 

I stumbled for the right words, my grip on the mop growing tighter. The Clash’s

self-titled record playing in the background.

 

“I actually have plans,” I told him the truth. “And I’m not that hungry.”

 

The kind of awkward silence where he knows he’s not getting any.

 

“Yeah? Well, I’ll call another time when I can get lucky.” He hung up.

 

I heard my mouth make a noise I rarely use.

 

 

I am devastated for the girl I used to be. I am devastated that I was made to feel guilt and shame. This is, perhaps, a small snapshot of what was and is a larger problem. But there wasn’t the language yet for how men could be cruel without being cruel. It has taken a lot of convincing for me to understand there are a lot of fucking ways for relationships to be fucked up.

 

Though I don’t really remember this exchange, it is how he would respond if and when I said No. And because I now know that I have been a People-Pleaser, convinced my feelings weren’t as important as other people’s, I can look at this part of my life when I thought very little of myself. 

 

 

“In my high school yearbook, there is a note from a girl who wrote, ‘I like you even though you are very mean.’” This is the first sentence of one of the chapters in Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist. I hopped into my proverbial Delorean to the golden age of junior high, not stopping to remember the love\hate relationship with school uniforms and chocolate milk Fridays. Instead, I watched from outside the hall of a windowless classroom as one of the popular boys openly admitted to the entire class that he wished I wasn’t so mean. He didn’t look at me when he said this. I looked down at my feet and said nothing. I was wearing the new green suede Adidas I had gotten for my birthday.

 

I switched schools after ninth grade, hoping for another chance to start over. By junior year of high school, I found myself in a similar scenario. It was Diversity Day at a small private school with minimal consequences and privileged youth. The only memory I have of that day was of the unofficial spokesman of our class, who looked like he bathed in a grease trap, saying without looking at me that I was a bitch. I like to think of this as my quasi-Pretty in Pink moment; James Spader calling Molly Ringwald a bitch because she won’t go out with him.

 

What is it about not being invisible that men don’t seem to understand?

 

 

To Be Continued…