brief thoughts on my pick-me anti-feminist tendencies from my desk at work

My second to last ex boyfriend used to say you weren’t a real person unless you had grappled with suicide. My instinct to succumb to men left me agreeing, and as I silently nodded, I fell further into the well of his tactics that washed over me and left me gasping for air. With my recent now-ex boyfriend, the one I so recently declared my eternal devotion to, I found myself once again choking for breath as his waves crashed over me and his brick walls prohibited my escape. A subliminal suicide, drowning in my own submission. 

We all grapple with suicide in many ways, and we should be so lucky if it remains a simple ritual disturbance in our subway commutes and not a nightly feeling of inevitability. I regret ever agreeing that that made anyone any less of a serious person.

Isn’t the word Secretary just wonderful? As a girl, I heralded my mom’s boss’s executive assistant (new age secretary) as the most glamorous job in existence. Diane had tattooed eye makeup and would give me and my sisters free samples of Chanel lotions when we visited the office. Suburban, childless, and the keeper of my mom’s bosses secrets. I think she was my first internalized representation of female professional success. I think that says a lot. 

At brunch with my cousins over the weekend, Anna raved over the musical Six that she had recently seen. I disclosed, with appropriate levels of shame, that I was, in fact, a hater of Six the musical. She jokingly replied that she forgot that I hate women. I semi-jokingly replied that I do. She semi-jokingly reiterated: she knows. 

Now that I’m looking down into the well from the comfort of solid land, I see it all so disturbingly clearly. But the water is very deep.