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When I was fourteen, my mother told me there was no such thing as unconditional love. “I could stop loving you at any time,” my mother said.
“And my beauty.” “Your beauty?” “Love for a woman,” my mother said, “is always conditional on her beauty. That,” she said, my fingers grazing hers on the final fold, “and sex.”
“What could make you stop loving me?” I asked. “Oh, any number of things,” she said. “But you would never do any of them, so it doesn’t matter.” I wanted to know what they were, the unlisted cardinal sins. But she would not tell me. “It’s a ridiculous question,” she said, stacking the folded sheets into the basket and thrusting it toward me. The basket was heavy. I took it.
She would be my person, not my mother’s or father’s. She would be my person to love.
When the glass disappeared again the next year, I didn’t make up any names. I just waited for it to reappear again, and when it did, just a few weeks later, I was glad.
As long as they’re at it, what’s a little boob play, between friends?
Last night I dreamed that our house was made of birds. The walls were feather coated, expanding and contracting as the millions of birds that comprised them breathed in and out, in and out. Our staircase was the long curved neck of a giant flamingo, its body curled at the bottom, holding perfectly still to accommodate my weight as I made my way downstairs. There were no windows—only eyes, many eyes, blinking black bird eyes, staring at me as I walked through the great room. The floor was feather coated too, but then it changed its mind in the way dreams do, and instead of feathers I was
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There’s this test a feminist made up—the Bechdel test—to determine if a movie is worth seeing. To pass, the movie has to have at least two women in it, and the women have to talk to each other, and they have to talk about something other than a guy. My entire friendship with Louise would fail the Bechdel test.
When I was little, I would beg my father to play with me. I would poke him, I would tickle him, I would cover his eyes with my hands. I would take his cigarettes and hide them. I would turn up the folded-down corners of his books. I was so hungry, all the time. Always. I was a mouth, gaping and undone. I was a satchel, pulled apart and waiting to be filled. I was a chasm, a vortex, a winding endless funnel. I was the emptiness inside of things. I was the negative space. Fill me, feed me, give me shape.
“All these years we’ve loved him,” she said, in her annoying brand of unnecessary honesty, “and on her first day she waltzes in and he’s gone.”
That’s when I learned that beauty can make people love you, but it can make them hate you just as surely.
Once there was a girl. No, wait. Once there was a woman. No. Once there was a female human, older than a girl but younger than a woman.
Men made these girls—the saints, the Dissected Graces, the Wishbone Dolls. All of them, made by men. Eros and Thanatos.
“As long as there have been women,” Mom told me, “there have been ways to punish them for being women.”
If she could love her lover so completely, if she could lose herself in her dream of him and be a hero for it, then why should I stop loving Seth just because of the simple fact that he no longer loves me—that he most likely never loved me? Is reciprocity a condition for love? I have always accepted that my mother is right—no one will love me without conditions. But I reject the idea that I must set conditions for loving Seth. I want to love someone no matter what. I want to love someone even if it hurts me. Am I a saint? A broken dog in a cardboard box? I am a girl in a car in the middle of
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There’s a moment when I can hope that nothing has changed, not really, and in my head I do the sorting—I will pretend that nothing has happened, that I have not been pregnant, that I did not bleed and bleed, that he has not just kissed Apollonia. I will say it never happened, and it never will have happened, exactly as when my mother denied that she had ever told me bedtime stories about the saints, exactly as how she denied in Rome that she had gotten me drunk and how, in spite of my knowledge of these stories, in spite of the massive hangover, part of me believed her. We can believe things
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He turns around, he walks away, and he leaves me there, on the street, with just my shame for company.
“Do you believe in unconditional love?” “Absolutely,” Ruth says. “It’s one of the most dangerous forces in the universe.” “What do you mean?” “Unconditional love is how dogs feel about their masters. Dogs love their masters no matter how badly they’re beaten, how rarely they’re fed, and how terribly they’re cared for. They don’t know any better than to love without conditions.”
“When someone loves unconditionally, they’re saying, “I am your dog. You are my god. That’s who unconditional love is for—dogs and their masters, fools and their gods.”
“Why not let me read it?” He sounds like he’s really curious. “I just think maybe you’re not the right audience.”
I wish there was a button I could push, a page I could flip, to undo what I have done,
“I like your place.” “Yeah, well, there’s not much to like.” “That’s what I like about it.”
There was this girl. She was new last year. Her name’s Apollonia. And I hated her. Like, really, really hated her. I don’t know why.” “Is she pretty?” “Beautiful,” I say. “Sometimes that’s reason enough.”
She was in a stall, and when she came out, she didn’t flush. I don’t know, probably her old school had automatic flushers or something, but whatever, she didn’t flush. And then she washed her hands and she smiled at me and she left, and then when she was gone I went into the stall where she was.” “You didn’t.” “I did.
ok but I was scared she took a naked picture of her thank God it wasn't that😭
“You know,” I say, “the abortion is the best thing I’ve ever done for myself. And I’ll never tell my mother. I never tell her anything, really. And she never asks. It’s like she’s totally disconnected from me, you know? Like I was this egg she laid and now I’m totally separate from her.”
“you can’t make people love you. Love isn’t something you earn, or something you deserve. Love just is. Or it isn’t.
“The way I see it,” Bekah says, “you’ve got to do the things that make you feel good. Being active—doing things, making things better in whatever ways I can—that makes me feel good. Being passive—waiting around for other people to do things for me or to me—that makes me feel shitty. So, feel shitty or feel good. I choose good.”
And I’m more than any of the parts of me—I am more than my good parts, and more than my bad ones. I am more than my mistakes. I am more than my memories. I will say these words again and again, like an anthem, like a prayer, until I believe them. When I was fourteen, my mother told me that there was no such thing as unconditional love. But I am not fourteen, and I am more than my mother’s daughter.
Hearing this nursery rhyme when I was a little girl, I remember feeling smug. I was a girl, and therefore I was made of the good stuff; boys, on the other hand, were made of frogs and snails and puppy dog tails—slimy, icky, dismembered, even. Now, though, I read it differently.
As I grew up, I became distinctly aware that I was not made entirely of sweetness. The things I was made of sometimes disgusted me—my feelings of jealousy and rage, the functions of my body, the things that came out of me on a daily and monthly basis.
It was a rare moment of confidence and joy in my own flesh, but as soon as the words were spoken, I regretted them. This was not something you said aloud—ever—of your own body. That it was pretty, that it was perfect, that you loved it, even for a second, even just in the right light, the right skirt.
How did I come to think that I was a person who wasn’t worth screaming for? How was it that the fear of overreacting was stronger than a sense of self-preservation?
And you don’t have to listen to anyone who tells you what girls are made of. Decide on your own what your heart is. Protect it. Enjoy it. Share it, if you want. You get this one body and this one hundred years. Love it, love it, please, love it.
