This title has been shamelessly copied, word-for-word, from a poem of Hannah Ro's. She can be found @hannahrowrites on Instagram (not that anyone reads this blog, but credit where credit is due, even if it is to soothe only my scrutiny).
Been thinking a lot about this, the me that I am and the me that I was.
An oft-repeated phrase of my existence has been, 'God, I can't believe I actually had feelings for him!' the last time I said it was last week, for an absent-minded idiot I met only once and immediately caught feelings for. This lasted a full three months on nothing but hope (mine, not his) and is now winding down. Sort of. Ebbs and flows.
There is very little about my past selves I feel good about. If someone were to ask me the question, what do you wish you could change about yourself at age 15? I would probably say... fuck, where do I start?
At this stage in my life, knowing how fleeting body shapes can be, I'd probably not change my body. For one thing, I was fucking fit, had a lithe body with curves at age 15... cannot believe I thought I was fat... shit, there I go again, cringing at my past self.
I would probably start by giving myself the self-assurance to not be torn apart by boys.
It was a boy who told me, at age 11, that I was getting fat, when I grew breasts a little earlier than other girls. I was 12 when a boy pushed me down a flight of stairs because he didn't know how to tell me he was upset at something I said. The next year, the same boy let me know I was an insufferable know-it-all (Severus Snape really had the best lines). It was a boy who, at age 14, made a habit of kicking my shins each time he passed by. And I was 15 when a boy asked - what is so great about you? You can't play football, you don't know any good songs, you don't even wear good clothes... seriously, Kaveri, don't you know those are guys' shorts? I actually did, they were my brother's, and I liked them because they were loose and had pockets.
At age 16, I finally yelled at a boy in the Physics lab - he called me stupid because I had gotten a question wrong. But my intelligence was the one thing I had, the one thing I was immensely proud of and god help the boy who tried to take it away from me. It was an ugly mess of fire and tears, and my timid Physics teacher could do nothing but step back and sheepishly enjoy the show. I turned a shade of red that could finally be seen through my deep brown, sunkissed skin. I could feel the heat radiate out of my arms, my ears, my neck. The boy retreated to the far corner of the room, and that's when I realised something. Boys could be frightened. The more you know.
Of course, boys tend to have a better PR. The next day the whole school got to know that I had yelled at him, heartbroken as I was when he rejected me. Seriously, did I really think I could have a shot with someone like him? That's when I first realised that PR stands for PatriaRchy.
This self-assurance will run on fumes.
I still found ways to love a boy in the midst of all this. More than one... in fact, I believe I was juggling five boys in my head between ages 15 to 18. Quite the orgy. But they were far-off loves, with little to no interaction. The boy I used to fight with at age 11, who moved abroad by the time I reached high school. The tall boy in the class above me, with gorgeous curly hair. The boy that first loved me, but ended up dating my close friend (and of course, that's when I began to love him). They were boys that didn't notice me, but they were also the ones that weren't mean to me. Safe, even in my fantasies. It didn't matter that they were in other relationships, or in love with people that were more real in their lives. I credit them with teaching me what love, in and of itself, could look like. I learnt how to love without ownership much before it was considered a healthy form of loving. It's the only form of loving I feel secure enough to do.
These days, when I ask why I actually liked that boy (should I say man? Have they grown up yet?), it's more rhetorical. I know why. It took years of expensive therapy to find out, but I do. It will probably take another fair few years, however, to reconcile with the kind of person I am, the people I embody. Because now, when a boy loves me, I wonder what he can see that I can't, and in my head, the symphony of just-cracked voices diss him for his bad judgment. And when a boy doesn't love me, that symphony minces no words explaining how I was just too much.
Too much what, I wonder.
Fuck, where do I start?
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