will never quite give you what you need, and never quite do enough around the house, and never quite comfort you in the way you need comforting, or fuck you in the way you need to be fucked, who will never quite deserve you but yet believes he deserves the medal for staying with you, a man who will always prioritise sport, who will smell and shit and burp and fart and lie and cheat and be lazy and get complacent, even if he wasn’t to begin with, who will inwardly roll his eyes over time, who will let you take the strain if you’re stupid enough to have children with him.
That’s not a prize.
It’s how to ruin your life.
‘I let go of this,’ I say out loud, to my shitty cracked ceiling. My heart is closed for business. And not in a when-I-meet-the-right-guy-I’ll-take-it-back way. I’m honestly done.
I’m not just done. I’m angry.
So. Fucking. Angry.
I mean, aren’t you?
I hate men.
I hate how annoyed they get when you dare show any negative emotion – usually triggered by them. Acting like you’ve let the side down with all your pathetic emotions and ruined the fun. How they secretly think you shouldn’t be upset because they wouldn’t be. The judgement that lingers like putrid BO whenever you confess an anxiety or sadness.
I hate how they don’t believe you. That if you’re ever stupid enough to tell them about something another man has done, how they look for the holes in your traumas and widen the hole until you doubt it really happened – sometimes without even saying a word, just by pulling a face they don’t even realise they’re pulling. How sometimes they just ignore what you’ve said. Block it out because it ruins their day that you dared to get yourself violated by one of those nutcases who definitely isn’t them or anyone they know and now you wanna talk about it, goddammit?
I hate how sometimes when they tickle you in a play fight, they hold you down to show off their superior strength and you squeal like it’s funny but also the threat is there.
I hate men because the threat is always, always there.
I hate men because they’re so lacking in exhaustion from not constantly feeling in danger. They walk with this general easiness, like they’ve earned it, rather than taking a moment to examine their luck that they’re not terrified of violent rape whenever they leave their house.
I hate men because they only ever want you for the idea of you – all the good, sexy bits and not the messy, traumatised bits. Bits that are traumatised BECAUSE OF MEN.
I hate men because they’ve made me hate myself. I hate men because I could’ve been someone so much better, and greater, and cooler, and comfortable if it wasn’t for them. I hate men for not loving me when they’re the ones who made me unlovable. I hate men for making me hate myself for wanting one to love me. I hate men for the amount of time and energy they take from my life in the quest for it.
I hate.
I hate.
I hate them.
I don’t want them to love me any more.
I want them to feel as powerless as I’ve always felt.
I want them to pay.
I go out the next morning and get to the shops just as they open. The air con of the book store is so welcome that I want to pitch a tent and live in there. Though, after the pitying look the bookseller gives me ringing up my purchases, I’d be too embarrassed to stay.
‘Where have you been?’ Megan asks when I return home, sweating. ‘You seem happier.’ She’s sitting in a nest she’s made on the sofa – her favourite thing to do. She drags all the covers off all the beds and arranges them around her like a spiral of puffy candyfloss while watching Dawson’s Creek and doing impressions of Joey Potter’s wayward mouth expressions.
‘I am happier, thank you.’ I dump my heavy shopping bag down on the table, lean into a back stretch, and wince as I smell my already-smelly armpit. ‘Isn’t it a bit hot for the nest?’
‘I need the nest,’ she says. ‘My manager just told me I have to arrange the freaking launch event for our new jewellery line in only six weeks’ time. Because, you know, emailing your employees with giant projects on a Sunday morning is totally normal.’
‘Hon, that’s amazing.’
‘It’s terrifying and stressful, is what it is.’
‘So you