"We fuck." These are the words my boyfriend utters to me, mouth full of mac and cheese, when I ask him, What are some lovey things we do? Joking of course. I mean, I made him the mac and cheese. Well technically it was mine, he reheated it, but I'm okay with it because he's hungry and he knows I won't eat it. It was all we had at the house. But that's lovey, right? He's currently telling me that it's probably not a good idea to start out a public post on the internet with, "We fuck". But he's also chuckling in between this sentence, so I think it's funny enough to keep. I have been a hermit at his house for almost a week now while his parents are in Germany, because if he were to stay at my house, no one would be here to take care of the dog, Otto. So we've been home all day, listening to the rain. Him playing Xbox, me having minor meltdowns over intense math homework, him singing in between breaks on the couch, "Ba-ba-ba, do ya love me?" in a kitschy tune, me replying with, "Yes". I sit and type and think to myself about how we came to this point, of pure comfort with one another. How we can mutter "Hmmm" back and forth with one another, in higher pitched tones, then lower pitched tones, then just stopping as if nothing happened? How can I sit here and listen to his adorable commentary about whatever new game he's playing, dropping multiple f-bombs, and ending every sentence with, "Right, babe?", because he knows how much it all makes me laugh? I didn't stop and think about the comfort that two people can share until now. We don't just make crude jokes and slap them randomly into blogs. We are a very caring, compassionate, and equal couple. Like when I slave away for 2-8 hours doing homework that I never thought I would have to work so hard to do, and I eventually end up a sobbing mess in his bathroom because I've never been so average before college, he scoops me up, wraps me in his giant blue and white comforter his mom bought him when he was probably 9, and wipes away the tears, repeating, "You're doing just fine. It's going to be okay." And he's always done this. Since the day I met him. I don't recall a time where he's just let me sit and cry, not even if we've just gone through hell and back in an argument and I've been a raging lunatic. "It's going to be okay". It's always okay. I find myself being completely and 100% okay with him rambling, calling me homie in between stories, commenting on the intense "war music" that's playing in the background. Because it makes me so happy, so warm inside, that I have someone that doesn't take themselves so seriously. That isn't worried if they're talking too much, because they're not. They're just perfect. I wonder how we got to this amount of comfort in such little time. We've been together for almost 11 months, but it feels like marriage. I remember a couple weeks ago I had to cook dinner because my parents were out with friends for the night. I decided on chili, and I vividly recall the conversation between him and I, as I called from the kitchen, "BABE! I NEED YOU TO GO GET ME SOME SHREDDED CHEESE!" And his reply from the living room, "YEAH SURE WHAT KIND?" "GET THE OFF BRAND, IT'S CHEAPER! OH AND I NEED FRENCH BREAD!" "OKAY, CAN I TAKE YOUR CAR?" he asks. "YEAH, SURE! THERE SHOULD BE ENOUGH GAS!" We do things like this often. It makes me wonder how people find living together so hard. We thrive off of being with each other. For some odd reason, being apart and communicating through the shit-sphere of technology is when we get into our biggest fights. But I find myself being okay, excited even, with the idea of spending a week cooped up in the house together, the living room curtains open, watching the rain like gray static outside, listening to his same old commentary. And I think that's what everyone wants. Just someone to be around and to be okay with being around. Even if it's for hours on end. I laugh at how he says Ikea like Ee-kay-a, even though I know that's the right pronunciation. I laugh when I rush to get ready, and he throws me on the couch instead, telling me to relax. "You'll have enough time". I laugh when he climbs on top of my lap while I'm typing this, threatening to sit on my laptop if I don't kiss him immediately, and then runs back to his video game. I laugh constantly. I've only been around for 17 years. I've only been this happy once. With him. And as little as teens are supposed to know about love, I think I know just enough. I think love is when you come home really late from work and he's wide awake, waiting for you on the couch, a big smile on his face while you walk through the door. "I went to Javier's for dinner, but you can have the rest of my burrito. Or we can go out and get you something to eat, whatever you like." Love is when he makes fun of you, or utters a crude joke, and then as you begin to stomp off in between giggles because you have to admit that it was hilarious, he starts screaming hysterically, "BABY COME BACK, BABE, BABE, PLEASE COME BACK, BABYYY!" Love is when you both can make sex jokes, and still understand silently that neither of you are wanting that. Or when he drops everything to give you a ride somewhere, because you're sobbing at what your mom said and how she "forgot" that you had theater that day. Or when you bump your car in the Fred Meyer's parking lot down the street from his house, because as much as you two wanted a delightful breakfast, you didn't have groceries, leaving you with a dinged up front end and a second away from a panic attack. He dropped everything. He always drops everything. Love is complete and utter reliance on one another, whether it be the small things or the big things. Bringing him Taco Bell when he's sick, or picking him up from the airport because you've been without each other for a week and a half. It's continuing to go through hell and back, continuing to change, and stay the same, and letting each other grow however you have to. However you know how to. That's love. That's the love I have.
13 Comments
Step 1: Realize that even as a young girl, you already had an internalized fear towards men. You understood that you were vulnerable, and that they had some sort of power over you, and even though this is ridiculous because the only person who can make your decisions for you is yourself, still comprehend that that "power" they had was intertwined so deeply inside of them, it became hard to identify what it was. But to you, it was terrifying.
At the age of 15, begin understanding that other girls felt like you. Afraid to walk outside at night, afraid of anyone following you on your drive home or in the mall, afraid of every single man you graze shoulders with as you walk along the sidewalk to wherever your heading. Begin to feel used and angry. Don't stop feeling this way. Step 2: Begin to discover more and more facts about the inequality for women and other systematically non-dominant groups, such as the gender wage gap, mothers who are shamed into staying home and taking care of the children instead of creating a steady income for themselves or their families, rape victims, male and female, who are shunned, never taken seriously, or treated as though somehow if they "weren't at that party like everyone else and stayed home" this terrible act wouldn't have happened to them. As if somehow they provoked it. Learn about how African American women make even less than a white woman, and how Latina women make still less than the rest of us, and how when someone says to you, "That's irrelevant because my wife makes more than me/I make more than my husband", it stings. It stings because their vision is so secure into their own lives that they can't look into the lives of others through multiple lenses and realize that our experiences with gender differs because of our race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, ability, and age. Tell them they're wrong. Feel gratitude in your heart when someone else realizes that they were wrong as well. Step 3: Take an online History class and read your textbook, something you've never done in your entire life because high school was a breeze and you could basically bullshit through anything. Read about the Paleolithic societies and the Neolithic Era and discover that "hunter/gatherer" was not just a survival mechanism for the finest. It was the beginning of the division of labor based off of gender. Embrace the fact that every key piece of evidence our world has discovered and labeled as history was only discovered because us, women, were forced to stay in the shelters we created, take care of the children, gather berries and other small goods, and when our "husbands" (Paleolithic societies were just beginning to form the idea of marriage) came home from a hard day of getting far more opportunities to become a leader of a pack, or creating something that would propel us 5000 years in the future, we would be there cooking. As if all we're here to do is sit and listen from the sidelines. Because that was all we were ever deemed good for. The books we read in school are written by men. Our view of the world is through the lens of a man. And if it weren't for the second and first wave of feminism, we would still be labeled by the state with a great, big, red stamp on our foreheads, "Property of a Man". We were the equivalent of a house to our husbands. We, human beings that occupy over half the population, with ideas and intelligence and care and confidence, were in the same comparison as a two story building slapped together by plywood and brick. If we refused our husbands sex, because god forbid we didn't feel well or we simply did not want to perform that act at any given time, they had every right to force us into having it. Think about that. If someone had the complete and utter permission, the same as you and I have to wear clothes or write a poem or go to school, to force themselves upon you. And no one would do a thing about it. That's all you were good for. They were wrong. And we are so much more than that. Step 4: Take a women's studies class, and be opened up to so many things you didn't realize before, no matter how woke you thought you were. Realize that language is so important, and that some things you didn't even understand were slurs, were indeed slurs. Start to feel less ashamed that you consider yourself a feminist, and more confident to tell someone if they asked. Learn the definition. Really learn it. Learn the one that you want to embody, because yes, the entire first and second wave of feminism excluded African American women, and Asian American women, and Native American women, and women with disabilities, and non-conforming women, and any woman that was anything but white and heterosexual. Understand that. But don't practice it. Because equality isn't for white heterosexual women. Or even just women. It's for everyone. Step 5: Be okay with the fact that not everyone in your life is going to like, respect, or tolerate your decision. Be patient and kind to those who don't understand. After all, they've had this societal belief system ingrained in them since the beginning of 250,000 B.C.E. Be okay with being labeled as an extremist. Because you are. Your actions are not extreme. Your ideas are not extreme. But your feelings towards the oppression of people like you who fit into the category of "targets", they are indeed extreme. And that's okay. It's okay to be angry, and hostile, and loud about his oppression. It's encouraged. |
AuthorGrace Willcox. High school student. Likes to think of herself as cunning & witty. Probably isn't. Enjoy. Archives
March 2017
Categories |