Nothing New
Having a body is still the worst prison I've ever been in
It consumes me, the loneliness. I’ve tried to ignore it, to focus on myself, to nurture my friendships, and still. The thing I always notice is what’s missing. I sit on the train every day and wait for the meet cute. I put my Instagram on public and wait for someone to send a DM. I fall asleep imagining phantom arms around me. Pathetic insanity and yearning are my constant states of being. I’m sure the delusion started as harmless escapism, but now it’s become more akin to self harm.
I’ve been hyper aware of the emptiness since middle school. In hindsight, I’ll always be grateful that I didn’t spend my formative years dating after seeing some of the literal trauma my friends went through with men, but at the time it felt so isolating, so embarrassed to never be asked out. To always watch everyone else get the attention. To always be the third wheel, always feel like the ugly friend. It was at this time that perception became so important to me. The popular girls had straight hair, so I spent hours every week frying away my curls, hating everything that made me different. I was by no means overweight, but it was the tumblr era of anorexia so I would always wish I was skinnier. During COVID lockdowns, I was unemployed and depressed, and weighed the most I ever have. Once I went back to work again and was more active, the weight came back off without me having to do anything. And people started commenting on the weight loss, making me spiral even more, making me more aware of having a body. Weight is an awful metric to measure your value on, it fluctuates so much, and a lot of that is out of our control.
But the things we can control aren’t much easier. I am constantly thinking about my wardrobe, my style, my hair, and nothing ever feels right. I internalize every compliment, hone in on every part of myself that other people notice. Every time I feel like I’m making progress, the loneliness comes back and it seems like nothing I do will ever be enough. All the ego deaths, all the rebirths, all the versions of myself begging for acceptance. More than that, begging to be desired.
Maybe I watched too many romcoms. Or listened to too much Lana del Rey while my brain was still developing. But god damn, if I’m destined to live on this earth in a life devoid of passion and romance I might as well be dead. It’s all I’ve ever wanted, a love story of my own. And honestly, I’m not the only one. All the “me btw” memes, all the portrayals of epic pairings in media, “shipping” culture - the internet is full of longing and carefully curated selves.
Gustave Courbet – Woman with a Parrot, 1866
(aka, me btw)I’ve heard all the clichés about how it’ll happen eventually, everyone’s time is different, every pot has a lid, etc. I saw a tweet once that said something along the lines of “if everyone has a soulmate I think mine got hit by a car” and this is much more believable to me. Even that, though, is wishful thinking that’s too grand for even my romantic notions. I think some people will be single all their lives and that I’m one of them. There’s no fate, no grand design. If anything, there’s a curse.
In the poem that inspired this Substack, I wrote “Sometimes / I think sin was not the punishment for / Eden, but the absence of it.” Eve bit the apple, indulged a desire, and now I’ll never get to do the same. One of the designated people chosen to pay for the first woman’s audacity to want. Now I’ll spend my whole life longing, never satisfied.
Just me and the voice in the back of my head that tells me the answer is much simpler than all of that: that the common denominator to all my failures is me, and that it’s simply my own flaws that will deem me unloved and alone. Especially as I go on about the same old shit again.