you don't even EXIST to me!!!!
on the physical weight of a teenage summer, old men writing about olivia rodrigo, and why 'the craft' is my favorite teen movie of all time.
Young adulthood, to me, is all stained carpets and an extra weight that feels like it’s sown onto you. I’ve spent a lot of time these past few months sitting with both the emotional and physical sensation of age 17, just trying to place myself in that state of body and mind. Because there’s a tangible weight to it that I don’t even know how to articulate fully.
I can tell you that, for me, it gradually started to dissipate after I turned 19, as I’ve written here before. Like, sure, shedding the last of my baby fat probably helped shake off that feeling, but it’s not your literal, numerical weight that feels like it’s tethering you to the earth for those six or seven years. Sure, it’s the disgusting hormonal cocktail coursing through your veins that makes you perpetually exhausted and want to die 24/7, but it’s also the knowledge that no one takes you seriously. It’s a sense of hopelessness — or it was for me. The joke that teenagers are the worst is regarded as a known truth amongst people who are not teenagers, and that’s also a major factor in the existential misery present in pretty much every person within the age bracket. It’s the discovery that you are a real person with thoughts and opinions, but you have minimal autonomy on pretty much every level, and your own ideology or worldview can just be ignored on the basis that it’s yours. I do truly believe that the greatest gift one person can give another person is to take them seriously, and I found there to be little room to receive that kind of gift during those prime years.
Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about encountering teenagers in public, and sure, how annoying they can be in certain situations. But they’re supposed to be annoying! They’re going through the closest thing we have to baseline, mandated hell! If they’re not hurting anyone or themselves, who cares, let them be that way! Being a teenage girl was a harrowing experience, and now that I’m on the other side of it, I’ve been practicing keeping perspective and being patient when there are young girls ahead of me in a big group in line, maybe holding up the works. Once you start gauging the energy of the people around you when these things are happening, you notice that much older people begin acting like one of those girls personally shot their dog the second they feel annoyed or inconvenienced by their behavior. The kids are oblivious, but now I get mad for them.
I have a 14-year-old cousin, and she’s kind of like that — tired all the time, sneaks around her parents, has aggressively strong opinions on things she might not actually care about just to have the strong opinion. But, I’m kind of glad she doesn’t seem to feel the physical side of it like I did then. Sometimes, I’ll see a girl who looks like she’s trying to, contortionist-style, fold in on herself — like she feels every square inch of her body taking up space and is trying to develop a hunch and throw on as many layers as possible in order to hide said space and the way she fills it. I understand.
Last time I saw one like that, I went and looked at myself in the mirror for a long time afterwards, thinking about how relatively okay I felt and looked that day, and what a luxury that is. I went through hardcore training for cheer through all of high school and I still felt like a rotting pile of flesh all the time, my body turning against me, figuring there’d never be a day when it stopped. “Repulsion” doesn’t even begin to describe what I felt towards myself.
As the seasons change and another summer passes on, I’ve been trying to pin down what teenage summer was most affected by this phenomenon. The way I narrowed it down meant I couldn’t pick a “worst” summer that was made “the worst” by factors that had nothing to do with being that age.
Like, to give an example that I won’t go too in-depth on because I don’t feel like I’m equipped to write about it yet: For most of my early teen years, my brother was seriously sick and we spent all of our time, year-round, in and out of the hospital like it was our second home. That shit is difficult regardless of age. I mean, the fact that I was that age probably means it shaped me on a fundamental level that I’m still not able to fully comprehend — but it would’ve changed me on some level no matter what. So, none of those summers count.
I’ve settled on the summer I was 17 instead. The whole two-and-a-half months was consumed by my second-and-final summer at my day camp job an hour away, where I had to watch a group of nightmare children on the ride there and back on my bus, and then mind a group of less nightmarish 11-year-old girls the rest of the day. Actually, the group itself wasn’t too bad — my real issue was the people I worked with. Or, rather, it was their issue with me.
Now, I have not seen any of these people for years, and it’s totally possible that everything I felt and thought could’ve been a misunderstanding fired up by my aforementioned adolescence. It certainly wasn’t like I was bullied or anything. But this all requires the context that this camp was sold to potential employees as place where everyone is friends with everyone. They say, “Sure, we’re here for the kids, but everyone comes back for the friendships we all make with each other. Everyone loves camp.” I went in with this attitude, but certainly did not come out of it loving camp.
I’m sure me living far away and not seeing everyone off-season had something to do with the invisible rift. I’m sure the fact that I only became more nervous and awkward the second I caught a bad vibe didn’t help. Again, I had worked there the prior year too, and everything was fine then. Or at least slightly better. I know my kids liked me, but there was just…this weird sense of discomfort around most of the people my age. Like they’d sniffed something on me and marked me as “other.” There were a few times I got in trouble for things everyone else did and would never get in trouble for. There would be “best counselor” awards every week (mostly to give the kids an opportunity to cheer on their group) and everyone who worked in my age group got one except for me. They skipped our division the week it would’ve otherwise been mine. Again, “targeted” feels like waaaaaayyy too strong a word. It was more like “intentional silence.”
Of the girls I worked with, a few of them were just older and pretty strictly professional around me anyway, which was fine, but the ones my age always felt slightly cliquey. Not ever mean, but…like they were uncomfortable with me. Like they wanted to lean behind me to raise their eyebrows at each other about whatever awkward, stilted thing I’d said or done. My co-counselor was new, and she was always nice to me, but she wisely held everyone at a distance. Even then, barely knowing anything about her, everyone still liked her more than they liked me.
No one ever asked me about myself, and when I tried to just put something out there (because a certain someone at home was always on my case about what an anti-social, nervous fuck-up I was, so I thought I might as well try), no one listened. I mentioned to my supervisor (who everyone adored but who also seemed to just tolerate me) that I cheered at school and would love to be assigned to a cheer activity they had. I don’t think they actually put me — someone who was knowledgable and could help out with a genuinely dangerous sport — on the activity until like, the final two weeks. I would say things, and I would get used to no one turning to look at me to even acknowledge them. It’s like I’d croak out a sound that just translated to silence through their shared filter. Again, this is a time when you’re begging to just be witnessed and understood by anyone who will listen — it made the whole ordeal even more painful.
There was one boy I worked with sometimes who I liked being paired with just because he’d actually turn to look at me when I’d say something. It wasn’t even like he was particularly friendly when our names would be called together and we’d wrangle our group of kids. He’d mostly talk to them, not me, and I’d mostly talk to them, not him. But when I was acknowledged for a half-second? It made my day. I’d stutter through my answers because I just wasn’t used to being asked about non-work-related things at that point. He must’ve thought I had a screw loose. I’ll never forget it, and he didn’t realize he was doing anything. That’s how pathetic the whole situation was.
If this all happened now, it wouldn’t bother me as much. We’re at work, I don’t need to be friends with anyone if I can get my job done. It might sting a little bit, and I might be more indignant about being ignored if I felt it carried over to how my performance was judged, but I’d also be relaxed enough to be myself in the first place. Add a disgustingly sweltering summer lived in my body I was repulsed by into the mix, along with a home situation that made me feel just as shitty at the time, if not more shitty. Misery beyond belief.
This misery came to a head on one of our off-hours “bonding” activities with the eight of us and our supervisor, which I was invited to in the name of forced inclusivity. Again, it’s not like they were dragging their feet to invite me or being rude, but it still felt wrong to me — I didn’t belong there, stifling their fun. Still, when they planned a weekend day trip to Long Branch down the shore, I wrung my hands over a made-up reason to back out until I just decided to go.
I can see myself in that car mirrored in those girls folding in on themselves, bringing their shoulders in as tightly as they can and pulling their chest into their spine because they feel like they are spread on every surface, disgusting on every level, fighting with a body turned against them. The discomfort didn’t subside for me, even in a more relaxed setting.
Then, of course, I get my period. Because why not add more pain to the proceedings? If you have a uterus, you know what this exact physical sensation of realizing what’s happening is like, and you know the panic that follows when you weren’t prepared to feel it. I had packed emergency pads, but I obviously couldn’t whip that out in the middle of an hour-long car ride. I just sat eerily still, even more wound up, praying that I wouldn’t stain anything in this poor girl’s car.
I ran to the bathroom the second we arrived, but I stayed in my clearly-bloody shorts the rest of the day. No one said anything or offered help (Pain killers? Tampons?) and I didn't ask for any. As far as I know, every single one of those people there with me also had this experience on a monthly basis, but no words of the kind were exchanged. Again, if something like that happened now, of course, I would go full Greta Gerwig at the dinner table in 20th Century Women. Who cares. It was just an already-uncomfortable situation compounded by another, totally separate uncomfortable situation — so embarrassed to have to drag my rotting pile of flesh of a body around them and sputter like I didn’t know how to string a sentence together every day that I just didn’t even want to start talking. I let out half-strangled jokes that didn’t land and wiped hot tears from my heavy, round, ugly face when I turned away.
The whole ride home, I thought of a ringleader in a room of his grown friends leading the taunt, assuming there must be a biological reason why I’m angry about something, assuming blood and anger aren’t two independently operating events. My whole childhood is my mom telling me not to react, because then they “win.” As if they hadn't already won just by being. I got yelled at for changing out of stained clothes, for stripping sheets, as if they wouldn’t yell about how they didn’t want to know about that if I told them why I had to change outfits.
Everything is rotting flesh and slimy, clotted blood and balling up my sheets and burning holes in my floor and everything is either a joke if it’s on me or an attack if it’s on him. Everything is the near-orgasmic relief of the sob I can let out when the door closes, bloody or not, and the way the sobbing relieves my migraine coming on makes me feel like I’ve been cleansed by someone taking pity from above, sweet relief flooding in through my temples.
That didn’t just “feel” awful. It was awful. We talk about these things looking back like it was pain we imagined, or exaggerated. I didn’t imagine any of that. That was my life. People have gone through worse things — I mean, I had gone through fucking worse things, but that doesn't diminish this. It was heightened, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t real. My body wanted me dead and my co-workers wanted me gone and I sobbed when I got home from the beach and I sobbed when camp was finally over.
Sending that email to make up an excuse to not come back the following summer felt like a pressure-release valve. Like a clean snap of the neck, satisfying even when the sensation leaves your fingertips. Now that I think about it, that autumn was when I started seriously studying tarot, buying books with whatever pocket change I could scrounge up to learn about witchcraft. It was a blind grope for control over a future where I had none.
The end of the following summer, I was packing my shit up to move back to the city for school. I remember having a clear, distinct thought that I wished I could stain everything in the house — drag myself along the carpet like an animal in heat and bleed on every surface I could pull myself on, groaning like the rug fibers were cutting my legs up.
He wants to talk to me like I’m a dog, make an example of me like I’m something he calls on command? Let’s act like one. Let’s be hair and folds of skin and an open, bleeding wound waving goodbye. Let’s kiss girlhood right where it hurts and rub our faces deep into it for good measure. Let’s fill the room with the stench.
They’ll have to drug me out of them. I’ll make them live in me and not be able to leave.
Now, I say all of that and it’s all true, but I’m nervous to say it. I’m nervous to write about being a person who menstruates and making a statement that makes it sound…animalistic. Or like logic leaves me in those moments. Because we all do this thing on social media now where everything works in absolutes: if something is your specific experience, everyone has to say, actually, my experience wasn’t like that. On the apps, “girlhood” is talked about like it’s one defined, universal thing and isn’t just…individual human experiences. Because we’re…you know, our own people who happen to have certain shared knowledge because we’re socialized the same way in the same world. There’s no nuance to these conversations in these spaces where we’re having them.
Obviously, not all women menstruate, not all people who menstruate are women, etc. etc., but having a period is tied to our general perception of womanhood, and I’m terrified of talking about agony of the spirit or body as if it precludes intellect. I write a lot about the violence that can be found in womanhood as it currently exists, but I’m concerned that it will be taken as all that exists — or that someone will mistake it for saying women are feral, can’t be trusted when the situation goes beyond just feeling. There’s a genuine fear of all of this imagery that comes with bleeding that surrounds us — I had a media professor once who assigned us to read this study about society’s general fear of things that leak or feel formless, all stemming from this ingrained, psychological fear of people who bleed. It’s unclean. It’s unstructured. They could drown in our wailing, in our failed attempt to produce something they don’t have to be ashamed of. It’s beneath personhood. It’s strictly animalic.
We’ve reached the point where young girls go online and joke about things being “girl math” as an exercise in irony (maybe?) and make genuine pleas to “weaponize incompetence” and say they’d rather be cared for than work and claim that the euphoric joy of womanhood is dependent on capitalistic consumption. It’s all choice feminism (meaning the incorrect idea that feminism is not a political stance or a collective movement, but just “women doing whatever they want,” including being subjugated).
I’m not a social scientist, and I don’t have the wherewithal or the will to dissect this regression or the reasons behind it. I do think there’s a desire to sink back into a role that is often ridiculed and wear it as a badge of honor, which makes sense in theory — femininity is the ultimate weakness in the eyes of the world, so why not lean into what they hate? But it’s not satirical or critical or funny or thought-provoking. It’s just them acting like what the world sees them as anyway.
We hear a new story every day about how these radicalized, too-online boys are murdering anyone they’re rejected by because a grown man with no life on one of these goddamn apps told them women are their oppressors — that young girls yearning for a world that will take them seriously threatens their own yearning. Unclean, unstructured.
I don’t know how to tell every one of them how different the world is outside of the safety we feel we build in our little screens. And I get it, I participated in some level of escapism on socials when I was in their position. But I have this desperate, clawing need to save them from everything and I don’t know how to. Some days I just pace about it for hours, spouting rage that will move nothing. I want to save every 15-year-old from this world they’ve been saddled with. I want to save them from everyone in their lives. (I want to go back and protect myself from him. My “girlhood” was dead weight and choking on myself.) I spend so much time seriously worrying about these girls I don’t know. I lose sleep over it. I want everyone to be held and I want my fury to dig the tunnel out.
But it won’t. And I can’t. And I don’t know what to do. I’m strapped to the table and failing them as a result.
To circle back to why I’ve been stewing on all of this in the first place — the physical sensation of being 17 — we have to zero in on the pop culture moment at large, because that’s what we do here. It’s me you’re dealing with, so everything comes back to pop.
In case you’ve been vacationing away from planet Earth and know nothing about anything anyone is talking about: we’re living through an Olivia Rodrigo album cycle at the moment. Based on what I know about her, I like Olivia. I think it’s cool that she goes into interviews gushing about her influences and that she gets to write angry music that she seems to love making and I love that young people (or any people, really) hear themselves and their real emotions in said music. I think she has great pop songs under her belt already, and that’s no small feat. Great pop songs are hard to write and produce and perform. I study the art and science of it, I know.
I think it’s a bummer that, because major music journalism is a sinking ship with a burning top deck, I got to read a bunch of reviews written by older men of this album about and by a young girl. They can certainly enjoy the album, and it’s not like they’re not allowed to share their take on it in that forum, but it’s also not like most of them considered another option. Having a few people who’ve actually been teenage girls share their more nuanced and experienced takes on the subject matter might be useful, yes? Still, most of the writing you can find by actual younger women about the album is just attempting to sell you on the notion that young girls have a lot of feelings — and that’s okay! They’re valid feelings!
It’s not the writers’ fault, obviously, but the fact that we’re still not past that level of analysis? That brilliant writers have to waste space convincing you that fellow complex human beings deserve to be considered as such? It pisses me off to no end. Criticism at large deserves better than that. Any art that deals with teenage girls and their struggles deserves better than that.
This is where my favorite teen movie of all time enters the frame, friends.
Listen, it’s October. When the Olivia Rodrigo album came out, it was almost October, so I was gearing up for my annual rewatch of The Craft anyway. But when I hit play on this new album, and the first thing I hear is “I’m as light as a feather and as stiff as a board”???? Recalling a scene that we would use the word “iconic” for in my house? We know a tradition of CLASSIC CINEMA (as defined by me, I guess) is alive and well with the kids, and I’m glad.
Even if you have not seen the 1996 teen witch movie The Craft, you just have to know it shaped a good deal of my personality and that should give you a sense of what it’s bringing to the table.
I had never read this excellent oral history of the film until a week ago, right after my recent rewatch, but it contained within it is this real quote from the director: “That was my premise: What if those witchcraft girls in high school dressed like they were in The Cure?”
Now, a real quote from the writer: ”Hole’s Live Through This was spot-on for me musically while writing The Craft.” No, I did not know that those were real reference points until I read that piece, but again. Gives you a sense of why a teenage-me felt it so deeply.
(This also aligns with my theory that Jennifer’s Body is kind of the 2000s equivalent of The Craft — just in terms of cult classic feminist teen horror films that drew heavily on Live Through This for inspiration, seeing as “Jennifer’s Body” obviously inspired the title and “Violet” soundtracks its ending scene. Both are also so extremely of their respective time, almost to the point of parody looking back — there has never been a more 90s-looking movie than The Craft. Carrie is kind of the progenitor of all of these. I think about Ginger Snaps in a similar vein to both of these, though its metaphor about puberty turning a girl into a werewolf is a little more on the nose. Still great though. Highly recommend. You can insert your own rhetorical question about why teenage girls’ common experiences slot so perfectly into the horror genre, and then go re-read the beginning of this to answer it. Side-tangent over.)
The gist of the plot is that a high school girl moves to L.A. and discovers she’s a “natural” witch (meaning it’s hereditary, her mom who died while giving birth to her was a witch) by forming a coven with three social outcasts at her new school who are also witches. They invoke the power of a fictional Wiccan god (which production made up so as not to offend real practitioners — they even hired a Wiccan technical consultant on set to make sure it was as close to tradition as possible), and seemingly get everything they want and fix everything they’re insecure about. When the new girl, Sarah, suggests that karma is going to come back and get them for all, the three other girls — led by the very intense and power-hungry Nancy — spurn her and use witchcraft to try and kill her.
The third act (when the spurning really starts) takes a dark tonal left-turn, and people generally hate the ending. We’ll get into that in a second.
I love The Craft mainly on two levels. One: I love it as a movie about teenagers. The main characters are treated as real people with real concerns — abusive home lives (Nancy), overt racism at school (Rochelle), debilitating physical issues (Bonnie), serious depression (Sarah). There’s a moment right after they properly meet where Nancy points out a scar on Sarah’s wrist from when she attempted suicide. Bonnie, noting that the scar goes from the heel of her hand and down vertically, says, “You even did it the right way.” It’s almost played as a light moment, just in the way you know the movie knows. It knows what it’s like. It takes their problems seriously.
There is boy drama, but the object of our affection is shown to be absolutely rotted within the first 15 minutes of the movie. Maybe you don’t know someone who specifically spread STIs around or made up rumors about girls who wouldn’t sleep with him, but you knew someone like Chris in high school — operating in such a different sphere of existence that anything outside of his own desires doesn’t even factor on his radar. I’ve also always thought it was interesting that once Sarah casts a love spell on him to humiliate him, he insists that he can’t think — he only has the capacity to feel. Again, it’s a throwaway line, but the movie knows what it’s doing. His instinct is to take without consideration for another person’s desires or boundaries. You think about how he only knows how to “feel,” but not think, when he tries to rape Sarah, driven by a hazy mix of the spell and his own unconscious impulse to take because he wants. We hear about teenage girls being driven by emotion and void of rational thought all the time, but how many demeaning circumstances have you been in where someone like Chris in your life will be unbelievably cruel — and the reason, whether vocalized or not, comes down to a version of “you hurt my feelings”?
Level two: I love it as a movie about witchcraft. I watch Practical Magic and Hocus Pocus most years too, don’t get me wrong. But they treat witchcraft like it’s a fantasy movie magic trick. Though real witches might not walk on water the second after they perform a spell, the Craft practiced by these girls is based in a true dedication to the practice. Aside from Sarah, none of them were gifted magical powers that they just wake up with every day — most of the time, they have to work together in tandem to get anything to happen. Individually, they’re stuck in the systemic and socialized trap they’re handed, but together — they defy god. They literally take on the power of their deity. I hate to get all misty-eyed and surface-level “girl power”-y about it, because it’s more complex than that, but together, they are bigger than life. They’re bigger than death. They can destroy it, they’re beyond it. It’s not superhero bullshit, it’s survival heightened.
The thing is, the movie spends the first two acts building this complex and loving friend group, only to take the movie’s most complex character and basically make her a stand-in for Sarah’s mental illness in the final act. Plot- and character-wise, it’s a cheap way out. Nancy, the character in question, is always characterized as the villain — which makes zero sense to me — and this last half-hour solidifies this initial notion the audience might have that she’s purely evil. I’m not denying that Nancy is difficult and unfair at certain points throughout the story, but as many before me have pointed out, a movie that was supposedly about teen girls harnessing the power and control they are rarely allowed in this life does a swift heel-turn and literally institutionalizes its mouthpiece for wanting too much — just doing what the real world metaphorically does to people like her anyway. In that sense, I respect the ending. It’s realistic. They wouldn’t be able to get away with complete control for long before the powers-that-be whip them back into shape. They’d lock up the one beyond reforming anyway.
The brilliant Angelica Jade Bastién wrote an essay for Vulture about The Craft’s legacy a few years ago, and I like the way she explains The Nancy Situation:
Sarah’s presence disrupts the delicate balance of the coven. Her status as a natural witch, who leans toward the light and aids the other girls, makes Nancy feel discarded. She becomes power-hungry and turns Sarah into her target. It’s a brutal, but understandable turn. That Bonnie and Rochelle easily fall into step with her, despite the kindness Sarah has shown them, may be cruel, but young girls typically don’t get access to the sort of joy that Nancy offers them, where rules feel inconsequential. They can’t gloriously fuck up the way young men do and survive unscathed. There is no female equivalent of that troublesome “boys will be boys” adage. Of course Nancy revels in the darkness, and the others fall under its sway — it’s the first time they’ve felt any sort of liberation. They aren’t looking for reason or safety or kindness — they want freedom.
And then later, on how Fairuza Balk makes the character:
Everyone else is too afraid of Nancy to understand her, and it isn’t like she’d let them close enough to anyway. It’s Balk’s performance that grants this story its potency. She’s tender yet terrifying, maniacally intense, yet resolutely focused on exploring the joys that have mostly been withheld from her. The best showcase for Balk’s skills comes when Nancy decides to exact revenge on Chris for how callously he treated her, and his attempt to rape Sarah. But like how she approaches everything in life, she goes too far. […] There is something delightfully unhinged about Nancy as the scene tips into horror: Her pointy-toed black boots scraping against the floor, her body moving with unnatural grace, her face split by a cheshire grin that communicates just how much vengeance she’s capable of. She’s a beguiling and fearsome portrait of female anger as she sends Chris hurtling to his death from a window.
So yeah. Let’s talk about that scene. The best scene.
Yes, I am a growing person who has worked to teach myself a lot about knowing that just because someone has wronged you repeatedly does not mean they will ever seek your forgiveness, and that’s just what you have to deal with as you move on with your life. Yes, I know you have to work through everything that happened and why you developed these unconscious reactions to things early on and understand why you need to grow beyond that so you can become a better, more balanced person. Yes, the high road is something I set my sights on and hope I can finally be worthy of.
But.
It’s like I can’t help the way the shit-eating grin sneaks up on me every time I watch this. It’s like a dream scenario. I started giggling on this most recent rewatch. I can recite it by heart like it’s a prayer. I’ve used it in real little rituals I’ve done before, like it’s sacred scripture.
This isn’t to say that I wish death upon anyone, or would like to use witchcraft to kill anyway (my hexes are few and far between, and that’s like a death wish, but I reserve them mostly for evil politicians). But it’s just base level catharsis I never get to express. Unless there was a real threat of death evident from the jump, no one would take it seriously, even now.
I’m picturing myself at Nancy’s age in the movie and putting a number of peaked-in-high-school crowd members in my line of fire, but now? I don’t even know who to direct my anger to. Every past version of myself, squirming in my own rotted protective layer of my skin, would have a different crowd to summon in front of the proverbial firing squad. I feel like everyone where “the only way [they] know how to treat women is treating them like WHORES!!!! But YOU’RE THE WHORE!!!!!” would be an ideal place to start. But I don’t know if it’d be enough. Another line of them pops up in the old guard’s place. I want to save every single teenager I worry about daily from the unfeeling, tossed-off “I’m sorry…?” they’ll hear over and over and over again. That mocking “He’s SORRY!!!!!” just sings like bells in the face of an insurmountable, societal force you cannot take on by yourself.
It’s me dragging myself across a carpet, staining everything a brownish red. Leaving the coppery smell in tact like it’s my territorial mark.
So many of our daily actions are motivated by shame, or maybe just the fear of having to confront shame — often for things that everyone feels or experiences, but we might not have the safety net of someone who’s willing to admit that within our reach. I think about that teenage desire to escape that shame, the often misguided anger it manifests as, and how all of that rests in this desire for autonomy.
Some of us are granted more autonomy than others from the word go, and I ache and I pace and I scratch my arms up over it. I’ll give myself a heart attack from soaking up the venom every single person on line at any Duane Reade anywhere has for them — simply for not knowing how to move in their own bodies. For feeling themselves spread on every surface when they’d rather be nothing.
Yes, I’m very mature and I’ve moved on from all of the stories I’ve told here and I’m better for it.
But.
I want to hold the space for them when it’s over. I want to set-dress the room and place their Chris those few paces away from the bed and throw the window wide open so we can start our scene the second they arrive. I want to point out the weight sown into them for the time being, loosen the stitching and say, “now, throw.”
It smells like pollen and fig trees blossoming the second the body crosses the window’s threshold. All salt the humidity brings and a new breed of sweet relief. Let’s fill the room with it. You’ll have to drug it out of me.