Queenie

by Candice Carty-Williams

Gemini men, they are takers. They will take every single thing from you, and they will drain you. They will never give to you, ever, because it’s not about you, it’s always about them. And they will leave you broken, in a heap on the floor.

“It’s constant, with you. It’s too much,” Tom said, his voice cracking. “You’re too much, Queenie.”

Turns out the sadness that silence from the person you love brings can be temporarily erased by the dull thrill of attention from strangers.

Actually, no man is as funny as me or any woman I’ve ever met.

Instead, I was met with what I’d been trying to pretend hadn’t always been a room full of white not-quite-liberals whose opinions, like their money, had been inherited.

Thank God for the National Health Service, because if I had to pay for these sessions myself I wouldn’t get close to halfway to recovery before bankrupting myself.

we’ve touched on my relationships with friends (I am dependent on them to validate my thoughts and actions), the casual sex (I am dependent on it to validate my body and my control), Tom (how dependent I was on him and how much that frightened me, leading to self-sabotage), my dad (I was absolutely not dependent on him, which is why I treat men as throwaway—not sure how keen I am on this Freud-type linking of the father to the sex).

Ah

“The road to recovery is not linear. It’s not straight. It’s a bumpy path, with lots of twists and turns. But you’re on the right track.”