you gave him everything, and the cool morning was still lonely. you type a message to your mother, but your fingers hover over the wording - you change i’m good, gonna go shopping to we are good, we are doing well to it’s nice here.
it is nice here. there are many people who love-you-two-together. you make him better, one of his friends will say. like you are the light he is being held up into; a source of distinction. you make him defined and capable.
it is easy to love when it is by habit. there will be eggs in the morning for him, and you will take him places without having to be asked, and you will ask for forgiveness for when you need things - i just need my own life, you say, and you mean - i have lost an element of my personhood. you will relent when the look crosses his face; downhearted, betrayed, bad girlfriend. you’ve cut him to the quick. you fold your needs into a back pocket, your drives and your desires. you say oh no, please, forget it.
it is nice here. it is nice he wants to know all your friends, and that he covets your time, and that you cannot get him out of your bed. it is nice that he is so appreciative of your leadership; you spend all of your free hours planning things for him. you make every choice, lead every decision. this is a good thing, that he loves you so much he’d agree to anything. for a single summer, it almost feels like bragging - it’s all me. you are too young to say it, but you feel yourself writing it in poems. i feel like i’m your mother. you scratch it out, disgusted.
he just does not like you talking to people he doesn’t know. he just does not like you hanging out with other girls. he just does not like any morning you ask to be your own, even for a moment. once, in the height of your misbehavior, he calls you crying, asking why you spend so much time checking-in-at-home. i should be your family, he chides. it makes you feel dirty and old. your friends all know him by force - he will pout if you hang out with them and leave him all alone. he counts the minutes you spend in the kitchen, making a sandwich without him. it’s like you want me out of your life. it’s like you hate me. it’s like.
in many ways, you are using him, also. you are afraid of being alone, after all. you have so many nightmares, and the world is easier when you can beg favors. it does not occur to you for many, many months that you aren’t actually asking for favors at all - you’re asking for the bare minimum. you hide that idea in the corner of your mind and you don’t touch it; too hot and angry with your own foolishness. you think of it as an economic transaction - at the very least, he will be there. and that is someone there, rather than no one.
in many ways, he is a good man, and you are exceptionally lucky. people will notice this. you two have been together for a while, and he is quiet but you-seem-happy-enough. in many ways, it would be an easy life, and you’re getting grey hairs. you could sleep and wake up and sleep and wake up, all in the same day. it is not a warm day, but it is not bitter, either, and what else can a person like you really ask for? once, someone told you - love is just a choice. you want love, right? choose it for yourself.
he is in love with you. you cannot talk about the book you just read, he isn’t interested. he is in love with you. you find yourself figuring out a lie so you don’t have to say i’m going to go hang out with my friends. he is in love with you. you drink until you are numb so you forget he will not touch you in reverence. he is in love, and you are in love, and you will be happy even if you have to squeeze it out of your own marrow.
at one point, without thinking, you say - i feel like you are so checked out of life, you are also checked out of this, and of us.
he looks at you and doesn’t reply. and you realize - he is not choosing back. this has never been love.
the men in my life are all good men, or, at least, they are men who are not violent - and that is enough for a man to be considered good; that he could be violent but is not.
the men in my life are good men. recently at a hardware store one of the men in my life let me stand behind him, just a little, in that ghosting way that girls can learn. the disappearing technique we master of shadowing behind our Good Men. this was to protect me from a man who was not-being-good.
i fall down. one of the good men in my life offers me one arm like a knight, we are laughing while i clamber back onto my feet. i give the good men in my life piggy back rides because i like to show off how strong i am. i give the good men in my life run-at-them hugs. i let the good men in my life pick me up like i am a sack of grain; i get the good men in my life coffee, i make them sandwiches, i teach them dancing.
i am a man-hater, obviously. i am gay enough the insult is sort of funny. waiting for the bus, where there are men who are not-known-to-be-good, i google how to make a fist. i can never remember if the thumb goes on the outside or the inside, only that it is imperative that i do not fuck it up or i will break my thumb at the same time the man tries to break me.
i walk my dog around the track only-at-dusk and-no-later. i made that mistake once, in august, hoping i could take a later run and maybe see the stars - i romanticized the idea of being able to skulk like a fox. the man that followed me across three lawns, two road-crossings, and back to my car - he spent the whole time whistling. the good men in my life say - oh, do you need me to come with you? and are actually asking - do you feel safe?
i fall down in a supermarket. a man i do not know grabs the inside of my knee. i do not know if the man is good, but i am supposed to give men the benefit of the doubt, so i laugh while standing. a man trying-to-be-in-my-life says what, no hug? and i have to decide if it worth it to just take off or put up with it. a man who-might-not-be-good stares at me while i walk by - i have to calculate if he’s just looking or if he’s watching. other men have badly hurt me, physically. the casual remark made is that those men are not real men. but they were real enough, to me.
there are many men who are mad at me. an entire reddit thread once was dedicated to how to dox me for feminist ranting - it was kind of funny, when it wasn’t downright scary. i have been stalked and harassed and treated horribly. they are all good men, in their own lives, you know. they are not violent, usually, unless provoked, and all it takes for a man to be good is for him to not be violent unless provoked, and i am, of course, always provoking.
a man in my life rolls his eyes. “i am sick of hearing this. we get it, all men are fucking evil. get over it.”
a man who-is-not-good shouts something unwritable at me. i have to tell the good man i am standing next to - it’s okay, this is nothing compared to what-could-be, this happens, it’s really not that big of a deal to me.
“but it should be,” he says. “it should be.”
There is so many quiet dehumanizing moments as a woman that cis men will never know. I cannot walk in a straight line if a man comes from the same direction. The sensation of strange hands on your hips because even though you weren’t actually in the way, he’s moving you out of his. The frantic, hellfire panic when he is shouting too close to you, even if it’s not about you.
I think this is, you know, why men think catcalling would be cute. They don’t get followed home or spoken down to. A woman shouting “hey nice ass!” is a singular moment. When I am catcalled, it is not the first time today a man has taken my personhood. I have been called sweetie at the store and had my student mansplain my own degree and buttoned up my coat when I saw a creepy guy staring. On the internet, being sexist is a funny “new” trend (the f in woman stands for funny, says a man with an f hidden somewhere in that name I guess). I am watching antifeminism come back again.
I know. “Sexism isn’t real in America,” you promise. This is because so much of sexism is fucking silent. Because when I say “just watch, we all live through this” - you say “I’ll pluck my eyes out before I see the evidence”.
Oh what a quiet whisper. I was doing better, is the worst part. I was really doing well. I thought about the future without flinching.
It’s a bad day, I tell myself. It has been a bad day for a very long time.
i miss you a lot. i keep thinking about how you looked with your head tilted back, laughing. i’ve lost lovers before and wept over my fingers. but what am i going to cry about this time? you were just my best friend. i still know your birthday and your favorite color and how you feel about lemonade and how you sound singing at the top of your lungs. like, i still think about you at night, wondering if you’re doing alright - but when i reach out, we walk the same six conversations - how’s it going? haha yeah that’s crazy. oh cool! yeah totally. yeah i’m busy too. hope we can see each other soon. i know we’re different people now. but you know. somehow, i still love you.
What do I want? I feel like my desires are all carefully pruned & tucked in rotting sachets behind my teeth. Sometimes I come to a crossroad and know - I need someone else to choose for me. Isn’t that what school was for? To train the yearning out of me? Isn’t that just this horrible world? I keep picking out every ugly item of want and hiding it. I need to be good, and being good means being unselfish, and being unselfish means. Have no self to give into.
At one point, at my grandmother’s house, I said - I don’t have many favorites of things. She looked at me with big sad eyes and said - it’s better that way. Trust me.
I feel, horribly, like I am behind. Shouldn’t I be engaged and have a home I own and a steady job that I tolerate? Shouldn’t I be on top of my fitness game and have a jogging group and a savings account? Shouldn’t I know myself by now?
It is so strange to compare. My mom was already holding my brother at this point in her life. I am barely holding on at all.
I have no money and no prospects. I don’t even know what the future vaguely looks like - only that it probably has student debt - and no, I haven’t picked up a new hobby yet. I am just barely surviving. I am writing myself letters, sometimes, to remind myself where I am and why everything has stalled in place. It still feels fake.
For my entire life, capitalism put me on a clock. I am a failure to my past self - no agent for my book, no law school, no awaiting marriage. I still carry that anxiety with me, even knowing it’s unhelpful. It’s what I’ve been taught, you know. That I should always be moving, like a shark; and like a shark, if I die for something that’s society’s fault… Well, that’s how things work. Don’t look at the water. Tuck yourself against the wind. Eat bigger fish or be eaten.
Sit in your ratty apartment you share with 9 other people. Cry into your adult hands because you feel both like a child and too-old. Watch people make coming-of-age movies about 18 year olds. There aren’t any for this generation - in fact, we have started setting them in the past. Before all this shit happened.
I just want to feel like I accomplished anything at all.
They taught you that you had to file yourself down to be acceptable; that you had to calm down or want less or smile more or feel less or speak less - that your passions were ugly and that your desires were selfish. You couldn’t admit to the bad nights, that was burdensome. You couldn’t ask for better, you couldn’t cry that loudly. When you said “Look what I made”, the answer was “…. Oh.” You became a sectioned person - good and not-good. The prayer in public and that private, terrible sin.
And then they looked at you and said - why don’t you trust anyone enough to let them in?
If want is a sapling, you are a forest in starlight. I’ve spent a lot of years controlling the blaze of my heart but something about you still sets me alight. Is it bad to be uncontained. A sinner at the green feet of you. All moss in the shed light, all reaching towards the shadow of your jawline. If yes is a motion, babe, it in every wide moment spent like this. Is it a sin to spend every second wondering - but what if? But what if?
Today my discover weekly playlist wants me only to listen to classical music. Today that is okay. Today I am lying on my bed listening to “the latitude of love” and thinking about where we keep love in our bodies. How it felt inside of car washes with the music turned all the way up. How people pull out guitars at parties, how my best friend looked over FaceTime, how in the summer my house stops using the back door because it would bother the honeybees.
If the latitude of love is a place, it is a palm. Or it is the smile wrinkles. Or it is the arch of your neck while you’re laughing. If the latitude of love is a time, it is beaches and hikes and curling up at home and touching her for the first time. It is watching birds with you and it is making breakfast and it is that each sunset still feels supernatural and that each sunrise still feels holy. It is the end of an eclipse and it is the spare items you tuck to hold your page in library books and it is childhood swings.
If love is a moment. It is my mother, asking me to describe this rainbow, because we are apart, and she wants to picture my life full of color. It is splitting a tangerine. It is calling home - the one you made from your own hard work and finding and suffering. It is her, leaning over the sink, hair dye in foils, texting me about avatar the last Airbender. It is having lost you, and still knowing your favorite food.
Today is the first day I have been able to wear a sundress. It’s spring and my life is rotating, ever so slowly, so that the latitude of love comes back into my hands again.
I am so in love with the world, even when the sun of my heart is unresting. I am constantly struck by how much love I was forgetting. It is not just a birthday present. It is that skinned knees heal. It is that broken bones will eventually mend. It is when, in the dark dark night, birds still sing.
You are not alone, after all, no matter how lost you are feeling. Me and the moon and the stars are all listening. The latitude of love will come back to you. And how wonderful it will be, to be alive on that morning.