“You write so much about how men have hurt you,” a friend said recently. “But what about all of the men you’ve hurt?”
Strangely, it is often harder for me to admit to the things I’ve done than it is to admit to the things I’ve felt.
I’ve been a subtle monster. I have hurt many people because I don’t know how to say “No.” Terrified of serving up rejection, I shudder with indecision. Because of this, I’ve learned that people will hear what they want to hear: if you’ve given someone any reason at all to believe there’s a chance, they will blindly pursue that chance until you explicitly put them out of their misery. I am terrible at putting people out of their misery. Shy optimism is one of the qualities I love about humans–that silent, unending belief that tomorrow must be better–but it’s also one that has allowed me to treat them in some horrible ways.
This has been the case with so many of the men who have loved me. I avoid initially hurting them for so long that, in the end, I destroy them. It’s a tug of war: a coquettish bat of the eyelash and then a dismissive remark to even the scale. I am always building walls around myself, insulating my heart from what I dread is the inevitable. It’s my own fault that I never end up with the nice ones.
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