Crushing

by Genevieve Novak

I wondered how only children did it. Who held the strings of their safety net taut? Did they have no secret language with someone who had known them since before they’d mastered bladder control, share no knowing looks across the living room when their mum went on a tangent about another post middle-aged male disappointment? Who could you be your truest, most switched-off self with if not a sibling? I didn’t even have to hide the fold of my double chin as I scrolled ever deeper in my blanket cocoon.

How funny, I thought, that everyone had problems, and how none of them, none, felt anything as important as our own. The whole world was full of people trying to guess their partners’ passwords; people lying awake at night trying to rewrite their memories; people making excuses for their unbalanced marriages; people brokenhearted or cautiously optimistic; people who had made a mess and hadn’t a hope of cleaning it up. All of us just as clueless and clumsy as one another, hoping that our match was looking for us too; hoping that the people we met along the way would be gentle with us. So often they weren’t, though, and you couldn’t fathom their thoughtlessness until it was your turn.