I started cat-sitting two years ago, in the winter right before I was about to move abroad. My evil hippie landlords, (they loved Mother Earth and All Her Critters™ but worked for an Oil Company™), decided to terminate my lease, leaving me homeless for the last month of the year. The man I was broken up with but still hooking up with connected me with a friend of his mom’s who needed a cat-sitter, and I needed a place to live other than my friends’ couches. Cat-sitting now makes up a decent chunk of my yearly income and sometimes I bump into that man’s parents on the street. Cute!
The first time I went to this man’s parents’ house I cried. Like, had to step out and silently try to not sob. I was overwhelmed by the privilege and beauty exuding from his house. I knew I was never going to be a part of it, I was only supposed to be around for the summer and now the air was crisper and my wool sweater had been taken out of my closet only to be slightly dampened by my panic. I am an intensely sensitive person, but being in unrequited love makes me feral with emotion. But almost a year and a half after that, I was cat-sitting on the street again and went over again for what would truly be the final time. We stayed in the kitchen and ate leftover lasagna for lunch and I sat still after, on my best Chill Girl behavior. By coffee, the conversation had veered into dangerous territory. “I think a lot about my existence in relation to men — how they exist mirrors my presence in the world, and I realize that most men don’t see me as a person but as a woman,” I cautiously started. He responded, “By that standard, you don’t really see men as people either.” It was one of the few times we hung out and didn’t fuck.
In 2019 I dated a man deeply mired in his head and scared of his feelings and it was so frustrating and obvious that I broke it off in a fury on an icy sidewalk in Allston before the holidays. I shoved his Christmas present into his hands and walked away crying, trying to not slip on the ice. I sat down on the sidewalk three blocks away from where I left him, still bawling my eyes out in anger, so much so that I smashed a bottle of red wine I had been carrying with me in the snow. I remember wine splashing onto my white pants and me not caring. When I finally ordered the Uber I was still sobbing and the driver, in an attempt to calm me down gave me chocolate and talked to me about Mario Kart. By the end of the ride, I was tired and defeated like a small child, and the driver asked me out, obviously sending me down further into my spiral. A year later, the man I cried on the sidewalk over contacted me to “talk about our relationship” even though he was in a relationship. And another year after that he sent me a confession, starting his email with the words I would have killed for on that snowy night in 2019: You were right in thinking I still loved you.
This didn’t end well for us; in fact, it ended yet again on a different Boston sidewalk, where I was sitting on a random stoop, pissed and on the phone with this man because he wouldn’t meet me for a drink before leaving the city even though he was a couple of blocks away from me. I was already pretty drunk, but I remember saying awful things that night, and I meant them. My favorite: “You barge into my life when I’m settled into it without you only to then not show up once I become a real person and need something of you. So why the fuck can’t you just leave me alone?”
I know these stories I’ve shared with you obliterate any case for what I’m about to say here, but I am a chill person in the grand scheme of things! Anger is not an inherent feeling to me, it’s my controlled response to being hurt. In past years, admitting sadness to myself has felt impossible, so I sought other outlets. I blew through most of my paychecks in 2019 partying and learning how to drink with a man with a much higher alcohol tolerance than me. I never allowed myself to sit alone with my emotions, so I rarely went home and carried a toothbrush, contact lens solution, and an extra pair of underwear in a tiny purse. Anyway, big shout out to therapy — I am cured now!
I’ve thought about that conversation I had with my situationship (let’s just call things what they are) in his parents’ kitchen almost two years ago, not only in the context of him and me but also in other relationships I’ve forged with men throughout my years of attempting to date men. It struck a nerve when he implied I didn’t see men as people, but not the nerve that makes me want to yell and kick and bawl on the kitchen floor, but a smaller yet more tenacious one within me, that quietly simmers a broth of rage when I think about all the times I was typecasted into being a kind of woman people (men) needed me to be to fulfill their delusional expectations of me.
But fuck. Maybe I didn’t boil over, and maybe I sat still with that information, walked back to the house I was staying at and wrote about this incident in my journal, made soup, and watched Apple TV until three in the morning because I maybe thought that he was right. If we are all projecting our existence onto others, why do I think I’m not? And then I realized I was doing it again, like women have been taught to do so over and over and over, like I did in various bars and beds and shitty Brighton apartments, here I was construing myself to uplift other people’s (men!) perceptions of me.
I know I am not saying anything revelatory, especially if you’re reading this as a person raised underneath the thunder-struck umbrella that is ‘womanhood’. When I was growing up, my family nicknamed me “Little Scorpion”. I was moody and had a temper, but it was mostly because I felt misunderstood and was struck with a crimson red “too dramatic” label anytime I had an emotion that wasn’t nonchalant. It’s no wonder I grew up knowing how to fold into an idea men had about me, like a cheap crumpled napkin. And so it’s also no wonder that once unfolded to the part of me that needs instead of only gives I morph into a small stinging insect, a young girl.
Men exist within the oppression of women’s/their own emotions — too much, too sensitive, too greedy, too dramatic — just as much as women do. What set me off the night in 2019 on an iced-over sidewalk was not that this man didn’t love me, it was that he could not express even the smallest amount of emotion, while I was being consumed by mine. And despite getting confirmation of being “right” in thinking that he loved me years later, it didn’t matter in the end. We both failed at the vulnerability that is required in any meaningful relationship between people, romance aside. My anger was the only real thing I gave him.
And…honestly? That’s fine. He deserved it.
Last year an old classmate cruised into my DMs with the opening line: “I have a bit of a crush on you since I believe you to be stunning, artsy, smart, and also a bit of a mess 😂”. I was in my hotel room alone and getting ready to sit at the hotel bar and read my book. I screenshot it, laughed, and then screamed.
Thanks for reading! I wrote this while I was yet again cat-sitting; at a bar drinking my first vodka martini (I am a gin martini girly); and then at the library — where I thought I was only playing music on my phone through my headphones only to realize I was also playing music on my laptop. Fucking embarrassing! Why didn’t anyone around me say anything? But then I thought about it: would I have said anything?
I didn’t catch too many waves surfing the Internet this week (haha) but I did like this TikTok about men on Hinge, which I deleted two days ago. Thank you vodka martini! I love you!
Two songs this week I played while writing this: My Emotions are Blinding, by Tennis and Hot Knife by Fiona Apple. Two sloppy kisses to them!
And a thank you to my friend Brian, for playing editor and quelling the doubts I had on this week’s issue. His review: “I laughed a few times.”
Bye! xx