You Don't Have To Be Broken To Be Interesting
I suppose what I’m learning is that there’s
no graduation ceremony for life.
I sort of hoped that there was.
I had sex with a man twenty years my
senior, is how this story starts. Ends.
It happened somewhere in the middle.
Days before, I’d said to a new friend - an incredibly charming Austrian - “No. I’m
done dicking around. I’m looking for my husband. I’m serious about love.” And that
felt like a brave thing to declare, because this guy, the Austrian, he was
saying how girls just need to relax. Stop putting pressure on themselves. Enjoy
sex without expectation, like “men” do. So it felt like a bold thing to do, to
show my cards to the table that way, because it’s emphatically not #chill. And
you know what? For a really fucking long time I played the Chill Girl. I’m
mortified to admit that, but I know I’m not alone. (Tell me I’m not alone). In
a weird way, though, despite myself and what I know to be true and real and
right, I wanted this Austrian’s approval. Wanted him to think I was cool. So I
could’ve agreed. An earlier version of myself might’ve.
(Definitely would’ve.)
(It took several more conversations with
said charming Austrian to ascertain he wasn’t, actually, charming. He was a
chauvinistic misogynistic egotist, and nobody has the right to tell you you’re “putting
too much pressure on sex”. The end.)
The Chill Girl, she’s “down for whatever”.
She’s “not like other girls” because she’s self-assured and has a ton of things
to do, so “whatever”. The Chill Girl doesn’t get mad if you don’t text right
back, don’t do what you said you’d do. The Chill Girl is laid back and easy,
says what she means and means what she says, so you don’t have to wonder.
There’s no “games” with the #ChillGirl, aside from the fact that the whole act
is a game.
Because I do care. I’m not chill. I don’t
want to “just see”. I don’t want to “hang out”. I don’t want maybe. I don’t want to “just be sleeping
together”. None of that. I want balls-deep, head-over-heels, can’t-live-without-each-other
love with my best friend and confidante and with that I want the slow
unfolding, the romance, the delicious courtship of it all. I want deliberate
and purposeful love and sex and relationships, in the same way I go in for
deliberate and purposeful with my work, career, family, friends, travel. Life.
My new year’s resolution – to sit at the grown-up’s table - included the caveat no
men under 30. I arbitrarily chose a cut-off point where I thought there
might be a difference between who was looking for the #ChillGirl, and who might
be looking for a woman becoming herself.
So there was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it… dalliance, with an older man, because
what? I thought I’d live in Bali forever and hang out with his two kids and ex-wife,
because that sounds grown-up to me? No. I don’t know. I guess I thought an
older man would reveal different sorts of secrets to me, and I mean – fucking shocker – he didn’t. You don’t get to a
certain age and have it figured out.
My “mantra” for April (forever) is prioritise love. And I mean that not in
terms of making room for it with other people, but to adjust the way I make
room for it within myself. Because saying
I’m looking for my one is different to following through with my actions.
So by prioritising love what I
actually mean is admitting – to myself, out loud, on the internet – that in
this alleged active pursuit of love, I do an awful lot of self-sabotaging.
I’m a huge believer that you don’t have to
be broken to be interesting, and that presenting our messiest parts is a sort
of weird “no-holds-barred” way our generation, in particular, gets to know each
other. We bond over being fucked up, swapping tales to play Who Has Been Hurt Hardest. And… and maybe I’ve been guilty of doing that, too. Of in the same
breath talking about just how hurt I’ve
been before, like that makes me special, and then whatever we can just have sex because like, I
can’t take the risk on heartbreak 2.0.
I can, actually.
I can take the risk.
And so. I’m done. I’m done writing about it, feeling the need to confess about every time I
romantically (sexually?) screw up. Because it isn’t screwing up, it’s learning, but the way I
put a narrative to that learning is by making myself seem more interesting for
being a little bit damaged. Confused. And because I keep presenting myself that way - poetic in my search - I’m
becoming a bit of a parody of myself.
I’m re-writing my story, you guys.
And the way I’m gonna do that is by
shutting the hell up about it. Just for a little while.
Because who I’m fucking – or even how I’m
fucking up - really isn’t the most interesting thing about me. I've got so much more to say than that.
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This post - revelation - came as a direct result of #AskTheQuestion. If you want on the process behind the becoming, join us here. Spoiler: it gets EVEN DEEPER.
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