#36

On the women in my life

I’ve never known if I were a girl’s girl.

For my entire adult life, babe, I’ve been in a relationship. Cleaning, cooking, sucking, screaming for an eternity. It hurts to type, to speak aloud, the more I reflect on that desperation. Days spent catering to a man’s every whim, every need, every day, without question. “Can I get you anything else?’ she pleads on all fours, tail wagging back-and-forth.

Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) dir. Jean Negulesco.

This past Valentine’s Day was spent not as I would have liked, a red-velvet-babeling dressed head-to-toe in Westwood, ready to kiss and fuck, but rather crying in the kitchen to my Brother about a county court judgement I’d received, for outstanding rent on an artists’ studio I’d left last year. He kept the keys, reader.

It’s funny when the mask falls off, hysterically so. That idea you’ve concocted of your own Valentine: calm, suave, sophisticated, an ordinary human being who would do no harm. I poured so much of my time into it, that love. So much time and energy and patience and money. So much of myself that I’ll never get back, babe. He smirks, striking the match. One long, slow scrape against that phosphorus.

“You’re gaslighting me!”, I yell with my chest five-times-over, sputtering as much bile as my empty belly can muster.

Putrid, red-hot, incensed. The angriest I’ve ever been in my entire life.

It’s only now, as I write from mine bed, reader, sun setting with Layla gazing out of my open window, that I have the mental wherewithal to reflect upon the women in my life whom I hold so dear.

“Female friendship is really important, Leah,” my Mother tells me.

“I know,” I sigh.

Eartha Kitt in Anna Lucasta (1958) dir. Arnold Laven.

As my life falls apart - crisp, clean tears rolling down rouged cheeks - and I gather the broken plant pot, babe, I think about ‘the look’ that these women give me; in the pub, at the dinner table, on the sofa huddled in a woollen blanket at 1:00am, green-tea-in-hand (I wish the ring had never come to me, Frodo laments.) Each and every time, baby-angel, I am met with a consistent look of horror. A visceral, knowing kind of horror, that can only come from lived experience.

Every woman in my life has been lied to, gaslit, cheated, abused, to varying degrees. Some fight while others allow this horror to devour them whole, flesh-and-bone. You pick up the pieces and go to work, smiling as you do so. “Can I get you anything else?” us girls grin in unison.

I feel a real, deep-seated guilt for neglecting these friendships, babe. A bowling ball in my stomach, a desert in my mouth. These women - you know who you are, angels - have always, always been there, in touching distance, but I’ve felt so discouraged, so controlled, that I didn’t know you were waiting for me. I’m sorry for that.

“You’re not going to see her, are you?” he scolds. I look ahead, listless.

Sharmila Tagore in An Evening in Paris (1967) dir. Shakti Samanta.

Those angels, now, are there for me when I’ve needed them most. Late at night, on the phone, in a message, in my heart. I look outside to a hanging topiary ball swinging in the wind from a neighbour’s window. The setting sun hits its deep-green bristles, casting a shadow across the front wall of the house. I imagine myself as that knotted ball of leaves, anxious and frenetic, desperate to stay stationary.

A magpie appears, and I know it to be my Father. We see each other and he descends, out of shot.

The outpouring of love and concern I’ve had is unprecedented to me. I feel so held, so understood, that I barely have to explain anything at all. That look of horror, of knowing, is enough.

I’ve never known if I were a girl’s girl, but I am, undoubtedly. I’ve never wanted to be the girl wrapped up in a man, unable to breathe - “Sorry, I can’t tonight,” eternally - it just happened, slowly, incrementally over time. Creeping its way into your life, as demons do. The sun draws to its inevitable close, as I look to a new future.

Until March, darling.