He wants me to understand his inner world, why he is the way he is, how a white place shapes a black man, so he gives me books to read.
He tells me I’m hard to read.
I talk about the horrors that england, a tiny country, has reverberated across several nations and how it’s behind a lot of colonised histories,
He says, if you think about it, it’s impressive for a small country to be able to do that,
Ironically, or sadly, I am reading Black Skin, White Masks,
Is proximity to whiteness so appealing that an African man is impressed by genocide and land theft,
He says he’s been on a similar journey, unpacking his relationship to whiteness,
In the same breath, he tells me he’s not attracted to black women,
He sees them as family,
I say I relate, but I don’t, I’ve been terrified of men of my culture from the media painting us as angry dangerous terrorists. I was colonised, but now I cannot unsee the truth,
The truth is collapsing every layer of illusion and deception, and there are moments when I am so profoundly overwhelmed by the truth,
Angry at the lost years,
He wants to tick boxes in the unspoken social order of heterosexual dating,
I’m trying to see if we hold the same politics, the same values,
Is he anti-colonial, is he anti-racist.
He cracks a joke about how we’re boycotting everything now when I mention I don’t shop at coles for their palantir partnership,
I say the co-creator is a zionist and supports israel,
He probes before I’m finished my sentence,
But what does he support about israel, as though my dislike for this billionaire is unjustified
I’ve dated narcissists before so a man negging a woman is not hard to spot now,
So I don’t smooth the atmosphere in the room, I give him a lesson on the powerful impact of boycotts and I cannot support companies involved in killing Palestinians
The day elon musk was announced a trillionaire I can’t help but talk about how we’re failing as a society,
He plays devil’s advocate, like previous men have, when I hold a conviction I’m passionate about, because men love breaking a woman, especially a confident, beautiful, has done-more-than-they-have-in-a-lifetime, about how cool it would actually be to drive a tesla around,
I say I’m not interested in making rich people richer, especially those who support white supremacy
He mentions he has a chatGPT membership, takes a photo of a tree on a walk when we both wonder its age, and uploads the photo into the ai that is anti-Palestinian with a problematic white creator, and I cannot help but think he’s a sheep like most of society and everything in me dries up and I want to escape him.
He insists on taking me to see the film Obsession and when he tells me a brief about it I repeatedly say, I don’t like scary movies, I get nightmares.
I also think scary movies are demonic and siphon my energy, but that’s another story.
He’s pushy and keeps reiterating it’s not a scary movie,
I mention I want to see the film about the author Franz Kafka and he doesn’t know Kafka and I can’t help but think he isn’t a reader like I am a reader
He insists on taking me to Obsession even though I express my apprehension.
Morning, coffee, sitting across of each other, he’s wearing boots that make him taller.
He wants to discuss the hypothetical of the film’s plot
Is it ethical of the man,
For some reason, and even though I haven’t see the film,
I am guarded and snappy answering his question,
I don’t want to answer it because it’s not based on true events,
Come on hypothetically what do you think,
It’s not a true story, it didn’t happen so I’m not answering whether it’s ethical or not on a fictional story,
C’mon humor me, his cheeks stiffen at the tension in the air, laughs nervously, waits for me to smooth things over and act like how he wants me to act, in the script he only has access to, and a script I refuse to be part of, I am no longer a caged woman.
Why are we discussing the hypotheticals, in real life, this wouldn’t happen, a woman would consent to being in a relationship with a man, that’s all there is to it, I’m not talking ethics here, this is fiction.
I’m short and frustrated,
I later discover than many female friends have encountered the same thing with other men in their life,
The men obsessed with the ethics of the film, and all my girlfriends shutting down the conversation just as quickly as I have,
I believe men are obsessed with the film because they themselves have cornered women into unethical situations, and they’re fascinated seeing a representation of themselves played out in a big wide screen,
We watch the movie, and he wants to hold hands and caress my arm and I am stiff and overwhelmed and disturbed and scared,
But the patriarchy for a brief moment makes me believe I should be more open to this man,
He’s not used to a woman who doesn’t need male validation, isn’t so easily swooned by his bare-minimum advances, can see through his fragile identity of a man, can read his anxious attachment and understand that it’s not on her to carry his emotional labour, so he sends a long winded text about how affection is a really important aspect of a relationship for him and I’m hard to read and he wants me to share my thoughts because he can’t possibly develop the emotional awareness to read a woman who verbalises things he does not want to hear.
I’m not hard to read. This man has no interest in understanding me, he’s looking for a wifey to fill a role like his mother did, subservient, quiet, obedient, self-sacrificing, struggling,
He has no interest in getting to know a woman he objectifies and wants only to fill the deep hole of loneliness that I feel leaking from the smell of his sweat.
He’s sweet-presenting to the desperate, insecure woman, has a tattoo about being able to get people to have a yarn, but when he asked about my dad on our first date and I said he’s passed away,
He didn’t have the tools to hold the awkwardness in the air by his jaw-dropped reaction,
The awkwardness filled the space, and even though I know it’s not mine to hold, I quickly changed the topic, diverted the attention of the conversation so he can answer a question about himself,
See, even before my dad died, I knew not to ask people about parents, because I know not to assume that everyone had two present parents.
It’s the sweet men with the under-tones, subtle reinforcement of the patriarchy that are harder to spot. Because he supports feminism, talks about female artists, and says he wants more women in medicine.
Once at dinner, when he didn’t know I was looking his way, he was looking at me with an unfriendly gaze, eyes that scared me and jolted me in my seat, and later when the waiter didn’t hear him, he raises his voice every so slightly and says “bill” in such a clipped way that I understand the mask of this man is slowly slipping, like many men who’ve tried to date me. Audre Lorde told me to identify myself as it will help me understand how people will react to me. My beauty attracts a lot of narcissistic men, men needing validation from beautiful women, insecure men needing a beautiful woman to uplift their status within society, straight arrogant men who engage in homoerotic social play, desperate to impress their male friends who they respect and adore deeply, and search for a woman to cage and showcase to their male friends. I’m beginning to think he’s one of the many men I have come across.
Men who pursue women romantically are rarely honest, and this is a common complaint amongst women. Men hide themselves, men are liars, men are disingenuous, but they don’t understand that a spiritual woman can see right through them, right through their every move, and our bodies react to them. I am spirit, I am the witches they burnt down, I am loud, I am unashamedly me, and I see everything.
A man with a colonised mind, unable to break free from his shackles, deeply lonely and miserable, as opposed to women in solitude and warmth. I love my solitude, I crave it, I need to come home to myself frequently, from the noises of the world, coming home to myself is a deeply warm, comforting, seductive, and lulling feeling. Like slipping into a warm bath in a candlelit bathroom after a twelve-hour work day. I love myself, with all my fears, my hang ups, my mistakes. I speak to myself often. I love and adore her (me).
This man had a pre-conceived idea of a woman, and he didn’t like the resistance he got, the independence I had from him, he was alarmed by my ability to separate and individuate myself from him. He wanted to create a spiritual umbilical cord, to make me tied to his mood swings and low vibration, and this is where I am reminded again that relationships with men pull me away from spirit; from life force, from my god, and I am sad in the presence of spiritually dead people. I am also reminded that depressed men seek me, a neurodivergent, full-of-life, ‘quirky’ woman to bring excitement to their life, only for them to siphon my energy and dull me. I am no longer leaky. My spiritual holes are permanently patched up and impenetrable.
He says I’m not affectionate when he wants to hold my hand after I called a code black at work – code blacks are for aggressive patients who have physically attacked someone, aka me in that instance – but sure, I tell him all of this and I’m still hard to read and not affectionate.
Men don’t want us to have needs, to be autonomous, to have a voice, to not need them, to be secure within ourselves, to be career driven, to have more money than them, more assets than them – even if they say they do.
Fuck you, bitch ass weak ass boy hiding behind a job in psychiatry when you need to go to therapy like we all do ‘cause the real bad bitches are the bad bitches doing regular inner work and shadow work. Work on yourself babe and I’m not your mama and I ain’t breastfeeding yo ass.
He texts like he using his chatGPT subscription for advice and that tipped me over the fucking edge. Formulate a thought of your own boi.
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