This is everything. It is everything I have been thinking about and crying about and trying to write about these past few weeks. Last night in bed with someone I’ve been seeing I started to sob and I couldn’t quite understand why–why I was crying and why I felt so embarrassed letting him see me that way, messy mascara and reddened cheeks and the ugliness of vulnerability. To let someone see your weakness automatically grants them the agency to hurt you. It has been three months but I am not ready to be hurt again. Not right now. Not yet.
After reading this interview I know what I was trying to say to him last night, in between the apologies for “being crazy” and the jokes meant to derail my own derailment. It had nothing and everything to do with him–nothing because he could be anyone, everything because he is the perfect metaphor for my own internal contradictions: for the first time in a long time, I have no idea what I want.
I. Me
Last fall, when I found out that my stepmother was having a baby, my first thought was one that, as a feminist, I’m ashamed to admit. With guilt tightening in my chest, I clenched my fists and hoped, “Please don’t let the baby be a girl.”
I think women have it tougher: there, I’ve said it. And that is why I wished for a baby brother.
Some of you will undoubtedly disagree with this sentiment, and surely men face their own set of societal problems, but this essay is not about that. This essay is about the fact that at one point in my life I found it so difficult to be a woman that I didn’t want someone I loved–or would love, once those cells coalesced into a being–to have to go through life as a woman.
I don’t consider myself a casualty of “the patriarchy,” but sometimes I do feel victimized—particularly when walking home by myself late at night, or when wondering how many dates is a ‘proper’ amount to wait to sleep with someone. I do not want to be a victim—I am strong and independent, a modern woman—but sometimes I do feel like one, and that confuses and upsets me. I live in a time and place that is arguably one of the best for a young woman in this world to live. I come from a family who never made me feel that my gender was an obstacle. I went to a college where “dismantling heteronormativity” was brunch conversation. But I guess this essay isn’t about all that either.
This is about the endless amount of small things–things the world expects of me, and that I have come to expect of myself, because I wear my femaleness with skepticism. It is about the minor battles that I wage with myself every day because I have been taught one thing by society but have come to believe another. The feminism blogs I read are constantly taking swipes at each other–no one can seem to come to an agreement on whether or not “hook-up culture” is bad, for example. And so, equipped with feminist texts and fashion magazines and my own canon of disjointed experiences, I am left to figure these things out on my own.
It had been almost three months, but I still couldn’t help looking in his medicine cabinet.
I wouldn’t say that I went into his bathroom with that as my sole intention–I really did have to pee!–but as I was washing my hands an internal debate raged. “Do it!” someone on my left shoulder said. “No! Don’t be so pathetic!” someone on my right shoulder replied, disgusted. Feeling helpless, I listened to my left and popped open the medicine cabinet as I ran the tap, hoping the gushing water would overpower the noise of my snooping.
Inside there were a string of condoms that had come from a box he and I had bought when we were together. I know this because they were the same kind that I have buried deep in the back of my top drawer. “He is using these to have sex with someone else,” my right shoulder whispered. “So are you!” retorted my left.
I only had the cabinet open for approximately three seconds. Like a gruesome roadside crash, I had to look, but I couldn’t look for very long. I had to look, but I didn’t want to see.
“We fully expect you to make big mistakes your first few months here,” my boss told me on my first day of work, after I successfully completed my initiation by putting together my own rolling chair. I am not used to making mistakes–no–I am not used to making mistakes and having them mean something. I think that’s what sets the “real world” apart from the life we knew in college; this isn’t a rehearsal anymore, the curtain’s been pulled back. Now, everything counts in a way beyond emotionality. Everything counts in a way that can be mathematically measured.
I have made plenty of mistakes that have meant something, but perhaps only to me, their impact manifesting as a dark, throbbing coil behind my breastbone. Often times they start with the phrase, “I’m not going to sleep with you. I am not that kind of girl.” The truth is that I have no idea what kind of girl I am. The truth is that the girl I am seems to change as suddenly as the weather patterns. A confident version of me might saunter in with the fog, only to leave again by daylight. I have wasted a lot of energy trying to convince the men I’ve loved that I didn’t love them at all, that I ‘didn’t believe’ in marriage and that ‘kids are just a vanity project,’ but it’s exhausting pretending to believe all of these things, and I am not young enough anymore to feel that pretending is worth the effort. I don’t know what kind of girl I am, but at this point I like to think I know what kind of girl I am not.
This is weird to say, especially at 22, but I was made an older sister again today. Finally, after much hand-wringing and the seemingly endless screaming fights and disappointments, my stepmom had a baby today. Her name is Madeleine Teresa, and though I have yet to meet her (she came just one day after I was home!), I can tell from the pictures that she is quite adorable.
Since Maddie was just born today, I’m not really finished processing or parsing all of the complicated emotions that go along with having this beautiful, wrinkly ball of loveliness pop right into your nucleic family, one that you have known your whole life as just a two-sibling family. I’m not angry or jealous, though I think a lot of people I’ve told have expected me to be. I’m actually just really, really happy, so happy that I’ve booked a ticket to fly home AGAIN (the second 6,000 mile trip in two weeks) July 3rd-5th to meet her. I couldn’t be more excited.
In honor of her birth, I unearthed the diary I kept when I was in 2nd grade. At 7 years old, I reminisced about the birth of my other little sister, Alison, which happened when I was 4. The entry is adorable, and I’m going to post it here. It’s so straightforward, and it says everything I’m really capable of saying about this right now:
What it was like when I got Ali went like this:
My parents called the house and I answered the phone. I said Hi and they said Hi back. They also told me I had a baby sister. At that moment I was so excited I fell over. My grammy got ready and we went to the hospital and me and my grammy waited for almost an hour. The doors to the baby room were locked. Finally my dad came and opened the doors. My baby sister Alison was so cute! I love her.
Being the super media nerds that we are, my friend Katie and I have decided to start a journalism group for twenty-somethings in the Bay Area. It’s called TK, which we originally used as the stand-in name until we came up with something else, but it kind of just stuck. In a way, it makes sense, though. TK is editorial speak for “To come.” What’s to come for the writers’ group is up for everyone involved to decide! Also: up and comin’ journos is what we are (or hope to be).
Katie and I have been feverishly planning this group for weeks, our battle scars ugly sunburn patches from sitting at Dolores Park Cafe hovered over our laptops, and were super excited to send out the invite today to the SF writers we (though mostly Katie) know.
Some of the coolest and most wonderful people I met in New York were those involved with NYU Local, so I wanted to start a similar group in San Francisco for young writers to convene on a bi-monthly basis. Many–myself included, sometimes–like to harp on and on about the demise of journalism, but the young writers I’ve met both in New York and San Francisco seem to have nothing but enthusiasm for the changes the field has undergone in recent years. Think about all the cool stuff we could accomplish if we harness all of our collective creative energy!
Aside from affording everyone a chance to meet like-minded media geeks, Katie and I have multiple potential ideas for the group, including a job forum for freelance work, guest lectures from established local journalists, and even a collaborative blog that could attempt to interactively map the cultural landscape of SF.
I’ve been so busy with my awesome Community Management job at Context that I haven’t had a lot of time to write recently. I’m hoping being surrounded by talented and inspired writers who share my enthusiasm for writing will help change that. If nothing else, we will serve delicious homemade goodies at our meetings. What starving freelance writer can turn down free food?
If TK sounds like something you’d be interested in attending, e-mail me! We’d love to have you.
On my second day in San Francisco, I went to a bakery that specializes in homemade cookies situated just around the corner from my apartment. They have flavors like “oatmeal chocolate chip” and “cookies and cream.” The owner of the bakery smiled and asked me about my day, remarking that he hadn’t seen me around before.
“Is this your first time here?” he asked.
“Yes, I just moved to the neighborhood, actually,” I responded.
“Oh, where from?”
“New York.” I paused. “That’s why I’m not used to people being nice to me for no reason.”
Everywhere I go in San Francisco people are nice to me for no reason other than that it’s polite to say “Good morning” when you pass someone on the sidewalk, to give a passerby an encouraging smile if they look dejected, to strike up friendly conversation in line at the local coffee shop. It’s a cliche that New Yorkers don’t possess this kind of genuine kindness, but in a city with a reputation like New York’s, some wear brusqueness as a badge of honor. There is none of that here, or at least I’ve encountered very little of it. I think it has something to do with the weather, which never tilts into the extreme. A 30-degree temperature range can have quite a calming effect on a person.
The plane I traveled out West on was a genuine 21st century bird. A full mid-morning flight, we were packed in tightly, bodies beside bodies beside bodies, with only a few inches to spare. A guard stood at the gate alerting anyone with oversize luggage that it’d have to be checked at the last minute; with so much baggage, so much stuff, I wondered if the plane would be able to lift up into the air at all.
On the sterile ramp I stand and wait for the children in front of me to step onto the plane. The little girl, decked out in gold curls and jelly shoes, trails a mini Hello Kitty rolling suitcase behind her. Crouched at the plane’s door, I tap the metal body, rapping my knuckles three times against its skin. “Remember to make friends with the plane,” my Stepmother had told me the night before, sensing my pre-flight jitters. “I always do,” I responded with mock enthusiasm. In truth I never would have forgotten something so important; I’d already performed the flying rituals my OCD mandated three times that morning, bizarre concoctions of repeated phrases and tongue clicks and prayers sent up to a God that, in better times, I swear never even exists.