This isn’t about you it’s about me

I know you told me so, and you can save your breath if a thought like that is coming up to the surface. It’s hard out here – in here, and god knows I’m hard enough on myself. But I do honestly appreciate you telling me so and also for taking the time to hear me out now.

I walked as fast as I could to the station, fighting back tears and trying to be brave. I’ve had my fair share of walks like that, usually blaming myself for being too drunk, too loud, too honest or just too much. Usually listening to Nikes. Lately I’ve been starting to see myself in a kinder light – someone who keeps going on dates despite the fact that being a woman is a dangerous thing to be. On the train I thought about him looking at me across the table, really looking, and thought it’s foreign to me that you can look at anyone for that long and decide, on the face of it, to make your contempt known when daytime rolls around. It’s not me you hate. You can’t because you don’t know me at all, I think, but that’s never stopped anyone before – just look at everything.

It’s hard for me because once I start looking, I’ll find something good somewhere, it doesn’t matter who you are. I’m a dog with a bone except the bone sometimes isn’t there or only exists in my imagination. What I used to see as pure masochism – a self-sabotaging habit of putting myself out there – might not be stupid or destructive but sort of hopeful and brave. In the weird economy I used to live in, it would have been much worse to be an optimist than a masochist. I always just accepted that there were misogynists and that I was one too because if I wasn’t, they wouldn’t like me, and if they didn’t like me nothing else could possibly matter. That’s when I thought I might be a nihilist, but I don’t think that anymore.

To tell you the truth, I feel sad about what happened. I don’t know how I managed to go out swallowing oysters the next day. I suppose I thought I’d spare myself a day at home noticing everywhere I felt sore, wondering to myself if, shit, this actually might be it. Much better to make it funny, get the right amount of attention for it and keep crashing through. I so badly don’t want to be a victim. I so want to make the bad experiences into something else.

If happiness really is going to come running through the streets to find me, I hope I’ll be out there to meet it. I hope I’ll be feeling brave, like I did getting off the train to meet that guy who couldn’t even bring himself to be kind.