It's bedtime and I'm being very sappy, but I just came across a joke that my ex taught me, way back when, and it was good to have a reason to think of her and smile.
There's a great nothing where we used to be, and I feel like I recall the broad strokes and the bad details whenever I think of her. Her trauma and my unassuming arrogance in trying to help her, the nights she wouldn't reply to my texts because she knew I would stay awake terrified she'd hurt herself, the way the only thing she knew how to do with someone who cared for her was to manipulate them just to feel in control of something, and all I knew to do when I knew someone was trying to be better, when they wanted to be good and wanted me, was to stay with them - more importantly, to never give up being wanted by someone I wanted in return.
But the bad is never the whole story. And it's not excusing the fucked up little ball of issues we made together, but we wouldn't have fought so hard for us without the good. And she did teach me jokes and I did get her to sleep at my house that one time, early on, and I smiled up at my ceiling feeling floaty and warm while she slept because I was safe enough to fall asleep around when nobody else was, and she tried as hard as she knew how no matter what anyone else said. Of course she sucked at it. Of course I should've stood up for myself, of course it shouldn't have gone on for as long as it did. Neither of us even knew we were together until it was over and didn't find out we were lesbians for another five years after the end.
But she brought me to her dorm before I ever really understood the risk she was opening herself up to by having someone in a small and empty room alone, I clearly remember the first time she touched me (head on my shoulder) after months of me being careful not to touch her lest she jump out of her skin or start trembling, the paint speckled up her arms the first day of our class together, and the way it felt to have earned every morsel of her stunted and spiky affection. The nights we lingered in my driveway after she got in her car to leave, the cramps in my muscles after leaning for so long and how bright the stars always looked for all of those extra, stolen minutes. Her body weight across my lap while I threaded my fingers through her fine, fine hair (which I could probably still find attached to something, somewhere, even after 8 years). It was like becoming friends with a feral cat and I got scratched plenty. It's much healthier to read about than to live, I promise.
But it's okay to acknowledge that our explosive and often terrible attempts to care for each other were rooted in the earnest attempt to be good to and for the other, whatever our personal reasons why. And sometimes, many times, certainly more as the years went on, we succeeded. There's still nobody I would rather haunt that town with. Those moments of joy snatched from two conflicting kinds of broken shine all the brighter for the confusing mess of hormones and feelings and pasts we snatched them from. How it felt to be safety for someone who had never known it, to feel that sense of purpose before I was old enough to really understand why that was such a problem. I could go on until the sun comes up, but that's okay. Maybe one day I will. But for now I read that dumb little joke and, just for a second, I can remember how she smelled and the way the light that filtered through the old library windows poured over us like beams of honeyed time unspooling around us, the way I rolled my eyes and tried not to laugh lest I break the hush of the third floor - the wicked pride in her eyes, the surprise in them at discovering how much she liked that she made me laugh... and the smile it brings to me isn't bittersweet anymore.
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Men it’s okay to be told no by a woman.
We’re not entitled to a yes just because she’s by herself or for any other reason.
The same energy we used to give those shoe cleaners in the mall is the same energy that women are on when they tell us no: they’re just not interested. And we don’t need to be salesmen.
We’re not entitled to an explanation either. And we don’t have to create our own narrative behind the no.
Accept the no and kindly move on. Another woman will say yes; just not her.
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