I was in a classroom full of boys in the fifth grade. Boys that age pretend to have quite the distaste for anything resembling femininity. Day after day, they talked about baseball, the Hardy Boys, politics and dissecting animals; and day after day I swore off dolls and pastels to find interest in the topics they discussed. Had I known that our differences were intended by design, I might be a different person today. I can't help but think that by declaring my independence from girlishness, I became dependent upon a façade and estranged from the person I was meant to be.
He was the closest thing to family I had, so I ran with.
Running, I got lost along the way; I thought I could handle it.
But handling each other turned into something, and something in turn became of nothing.
Nothing can change the words that were exchanged.
He said, "we won't make it," because I'm far too independent.
And I said, "I won't hate you," and you know – you know I meant it.
So. I said, "why don't you take a seat and let me explain.
Every lover says what you're saying."
He said, "if none of this is new, the common factor must be you.
You can be the change I seek."
Then I said, "we won't make it, because I'm far too independent.
And I know I will soon forget you; but you won't have the same luck I do."
It was Saturday when all this went down. Or, when I meant for it to go down. The problem seems to be we never really say what we mean to say. It's like the truth continues to haunt us, floating in and out of our conversations while threatening to silently tear us apart.
I told her how I continually watch every man turn from a charming suitor to a defenseless waste of testosterone, and she didn't have to say it for me to know that I'm the cause of this emasculation. They all say the same thing: I create these messes.
So she gave me a pep talk about letting a man be a man and acting more like a girl, but I kept thinking about how guilty it makes me feel when I don't pay. She said it should be a man's role to do the manly things, and I kept thinking of how I've never even met a guy who seems to have any of this figured out. Just as we concluded that the common factor among these mousey men is, in fact, me, I asked her if she thought that perhaps they are the ones lacking a backbone in the first place.
The irony is that I am what I am out of love – not spite; but somehow I manage to paint the same face on each one anyway.
I'm pretty sure I loved him. Why else would I have traded a style magazine for a comic book? I wanted him to love me, too. But we were only ten years old.
I said, "I'm trying to be what you want." And saying it out loud this morning, I was admitting to myself for the first time that I've been lying all along. The very thing that drew him in is the false impression he's grown to dislike; and it seems he lacks the interest to see what's really there anyway.
If I had sat in the shade making friendship bracelets like the other girls, I probably wouldn't know how to play kickball; sadly, it's a skill I never wanted to begin with.
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