Crushing

by Genevieve Novak

Obviously men were the problem, always, in every scenario, but I wasn’t blameless.

was treating a kitchen fire like Chernobyl.

Don’t let Taylor Swift fool you. Getting over someone is not that difficult. All you have to do is focus on every negative thing about them for the rest of your life until you forget to stop actively hoping for their slow and painful death, then get a haircut.

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

was running late to my own identity crisis. Usually reserved for people on the cusp of adulthood, I had only just realised on the edge of my thirties that I had no idea who I was, what I liked, or what I wanted. To

I believed I was the only person on earth without a clue what they were doing, and that when other people said this, it was only to placate me. Everyone else was a whole person, complex but complete, a finished puzzle, and only I was still a thousand cardboard squares in a box. I had questions; they had answers.