i call myself an atheist, and so i prefer to be called.

“do you just not believe in god at all then?” they ask

i find sugarcoating it pointless, so i simply respond, “i don’t.”

it has never been a major point of contention for me. as i see it, it happens to be more so the stating of a fact. a fact that is our default. a fact that would be our fate provided the minds of our ancestors remained depolluted by the ideas of a being superior to every single one of us. them and i, with our tedious feelings and a heart that tires out fading us into nothing, hold nothing against his power.

i call myself an atheist. with it comes the subdued superiority from having put my trust in what i see and feel as opposed to what i don’t.

despite my lack of belief in a higher power, i do not feel it worthy to announce it to every room i walk into, so as to not make those who believe uncomfortable. i do not make crude remarks on those who believe, saying the life that they believe to be temporary will be cruel to them, then watch delightedly as they struggle. i do not loudly declare how it has positively changed my life- denying his existence- though i know it has.

i call myself an atheist, but my mother does not. nor does my father. still, they remain blissfully aware of their daughter’s sinful existence.

i imagine how my mother would react if i ever told her. it wouldn’t come up naturally in conversation— we both steer away from the topic.

it would come up somehow, and i’d say i no longer adhere to the rules of the religion she taught me. side by side listening to a recitation of the qur’an during sunrise, those very ears now have to hear me say that those words never meant anything to me.

further despondence as i say i don’t believe in god at all. she looks at me with pity because she’s never known a life where your morality is not dependent on the rules sent down from heaven by a man.

she thinks it’s a phase; something i’ve picked up from my friends or social media. she isn’t aware of the nights i spent asking god to take all the pain away from my mother, only to wake up the next morning to the sound of my father yelling at her. she isn’t aware of how, throughout the day, i kept asking god to show me signs that he was up there— watching over me. i’d feel safer being less normal than everyone else if i knew i had someone so powerful to run back to when things went wrong.

an ironic observation i made as a child was that those who believed in god usually considered it human nature to seek a higher power as they betrayed the very essence of human nature; to love unapologetically, to make mistakes, to make bad decisions.

the older people around me described vividly all that would happen if i dared to enjoy my time on this earth they call their temporary home. after all, they’re convinced they belong in an eternal heaven, even as they snicker at and tear down a young girl simply for being.

they ridicule my inability to be patient. to wait, as they have and those before them, for death. live by god’s rules, wait for death, and the ultimate prize would be freedom to live as you’ve desired all along. silently, i ridicule their inability to live. it breaks my heart for a moment, because waiting is no way to live.

i wasn’t always this way, no. tethered to my father’s beliefs and my mother’s hopes, i had also reserved the idea of an eternal heaven in my mind. days that passed me by as i worried of what awaited me in the end because i’d listened to phoebe bridgers on repeat all day. the horrors i would face because i was flustered when a girl i liked complimented my outfit. the slight brush of our fingers i’d think about for the rest of the day weighed against the harsh heat of hellfire against my skin for eternity.

on the contrary, drowsily making my way to the prayer mat at dawn meant happiness awaited me after my death. depriving myself of all that brought me joy and gave me life. covering myself so no one could see the parts of me that ignited temptation. speaking only at a tone carefully curated so as to not make the men around me feel smaller. some of the things that secured my place in god’s heaven.

it’s hard for me to look at religion in a positive light when all i’ve ever learned about religion has been, in the most comical way, extremely aggressive. the stories they told of people facing gruesome endings for being human, for making mistakes. the stories i feared would someday become my reality if i didn’t live my life the way god wanted me to.

still, they boast about an all-powerful god. he can make anything happen to the people who disobey him. he uses his power to turn into hell the life of a teenage girl because she naturally had the desire to explore her body. he does nothing, however, to the rich old billionaire whose wealth is the result of the blood of a billion people less fortunate. in fact, god made them that way.

years of twisting the words of god to defend my religion. of convincing myself that all the suffering in the world serves as a reason to remember god, and it is only that— suffering. it does not matter, ultimately, because everyone who suffers lives peacefully forever, under god’s watchful eye in the heavens. years of forcing myself to believe. it was what my family would’ve wanted.

a religious daughter they never realized faked prayer. a lost identity, layers of clothing to conceal all that makes her human. underneath lies her heart; a heart that knows none of this means anything to her. not even a faint thread, she will let go as soon as she has the chance to. so she does. she is no longer herself, but was she ever?

it feels revolutionary to be able to decenter men because the world feeds us with only the importance of having men in your life.

your aunt who’s going through her second divorce keeps asking whether you have a boyfriend; she never learns. your mother tells you that you must marry a good man—she probably missed her own memo. hell, even all your favourite disney movies carry a message that your happy ever after can only happen once you end up with a man.

the concept of having to decenter men stems from the fact that a lot of us have made men the center of our lives; most times without even realizing it.

the voice in your head that has made you incredibly self-conscious about a weirdly specific insecurity? yeah, that’s what we’re trying to get rid of.

decentering men isn’t a bold movement that aims to put down a woman’s natural desire for love. the goal isn’t necessarily to paint all men in a bad light. it is for women to realize that the light they’ve been searching for has been within themselves this whole time.

with that being said, i invite you to witness what the process of decentering men from your life could look like over the course of 10 days.

day 1:

your day feels empty. you don’t have anyone to talk to. you aren’t waiting on somebody to reach out. you almost consider reaching out to the last person you were talking to just to fill the void.

you remind yourself that the entire reason you’re doing this is so that you can feel the void and then fill it with the things that fulfill you, so you don’t text him. you brave it out.

day 2:

your day felt less empty than simply monotonous. when you were out in public, you felt yourself act differently when a man you could see yourself being interested in was around. male validation has been the singular most important thing to you and most women you know. that’s a tough one to beat.

nevertheless, you came home to sleep in an empty bed. you enjoyed having so much space to yourself, but your brain craved for the warmth and closeness of another body.

day 3:

days are easier now because you’ve started to build things into your day that you look forward to. sometimes it’s a new way of making your morning coffee, and other times it’s playing older music you used to love.

nights can be tough. the world is quiet and there’s no one you can call your lover tonight. in your head, you’re falling asleep in the arms of a man who adores you unconditionally.

day 4:

you went to a park today, with only a book and your favourite snacks to keep you company. you started reading the book because you thought it’d be a good distraction, but you end up loving it and you haven’t been able to put it down.

the warmth of the sunlight caresses your skin, and the sound of the birds chirping brings you an indescribable sense of peace. everyone around you has a story of their own.

you fall asleep easier tonight because you’re not consumed by the plaguing thoughts that come from having a man in your life.

day 5:

you saw a few too many couples on your walk back home today. for a second, it felt like the universe was torturing you. you thought about downloading dating apps again until you remembered how you felt when you were on them.

some days are easier than others.

day 6:

echoing silence and the warm light of a candle you lit earlier in the night. soft music and you touch yourself to the thought of a man. you still have your desires, after all.

you discover that your own touch feels more magical than a man’s touch ever could. you know yourself best.

your heart stops aching for touch from a man.

day 7:

you were invited to a friend’s birthday party. you didn’t scan the room for potential love interests as soon as you walked in, and you focused on enjoying the night with your friends.

the stranger you made eye contact with one too many times never made a move. disappointment doesn’t wash over you when you realized that nothing romantic happened to you throughout the night.

you walked in without a man and left without one. you’re looking forward to getting in bed tonight and sleeping like a baby throughout the night.

day 8:

you were exhausted from the previous night, so you ordered in your favourite food for breakfast. an iced vanilla latte, your comfort breakfast sandwich and a chocolate croissant.

you put on a movie to watch while you feast on your beautiful breakfast spread. it’s your comfort movie, and you watch it all the way through without having to consider whether another person is enjoying it.

day 9:

you go out with your friend. it’s brunch and shopping.

the conversation doesn’t revolve around your situationship’s latest antics or your friend’s ex. you dive into topics that are more interesting. you share what you’ve been reading recently, and your friend shares the music she’s been listening to.

you leave with an album playing in your ears that carries the potential to be one of your favourites of all time, rather than a gnawing feeling of whether that man wants you.

** (avid supporter of beating the dead horse, don’t come for me)

day 10:

you stand in front of the mirror before your shower and take off your shirt. your fingers brush over your stretch marks; you’ve grown to think they’re beautiful even though you hated them at 16.

you stare at your breasts and think they’re perfect regardless of what you’ve been told by others previously.

you’ve never felt more gorgeous being admired by a man than you do, in this moment, being admired by yourself. free from the eye trained to look for the beauty standard in every human body.

when you decenter men, you stop seeing yourself through their eyes. you stop hating the things that they’ve said they dislike. you stop wanting to fix the things they said didn’t look right to them.

most importantly, you stop looking for love in the wrong places out of desperation. you know when to leave and you don’t stay in situations that aren’t fulfilling you because you’re afraid you won’t find better. because life isn’t worth living unless it’s with a man by your side.

you know what real love looks like because you gave yourself time to build a life full of love on your own. love is in remembering how your best friend takes her coffee and seeing her face light up as she talks about her latest interests. it is in a warm cup of tea and your comfort movie before bed.

if there’s anything you take from this piece, it is not that the pursuit of romance is pointless. it is that the pursuit of romance that is meaningful and fulfilling is unlikely if you don’t already have a life you’ve created that you love.

leaving the house wearing nothing to mask the features passed down to me over generations has people noticing me for all the wrong reasons.

are you sick? they ask with a look of genuine concern on their face.

someone else comments, you look tired.

i say i do it for myself until i examine why i put so much effort into each step and all i can hear are the critiquing voices of those who base my worth on physical appearance.

still, it can feel deceiving sometimes because i do try to make putting on makeup a process i look forward to. my favourite playlist in the background and a glass full of ice cold water. i call it a sacred ritual but it erases parts of me that make me feel closer to the women who came before me.

i start with a hydrating skincare routine. it’s not just enough to cover up what society deems as imperfections on your face. the way you do it has to be seamless; they shouldn’t be able to tell that you’ve got makeup on. god forbid they see the slightest hint of texture on your skin.

i brush my brows neatly as i wait for my skincare to settle into my skin. i notice a hair that doesn’t fit in right with the shape of my brow, so i pluck it out, which makes me wince. i quickly brush it off because they say beauty is pain.

i put on foundation, but only in thin layers, because again skin cannot look like skin. my skin tone looks even now, which is essential because society cannot bear to see even the slightest bit of hyperpigmentation.

i then put on concealer to hide the parts of my face audacious enough to peek through the layers of foundation. of course, it would be catastrophic if i forgot to apply concealer under my eyes, so i don’t. using the techniques i learnt from TikTok so that my under eyes wouldn’t crease or look too dry, i tap it on and hope for the best.

i will admit blush is the part i most look forward to in my makeup routine. it adds so much life back to my face after i’ve just put it through numerous layers of product. product that takes away all that makes me human from my face.

i must lock everything in with a good setting powder and a setting spray. i cannot bear the thought of my makeup coming off throughout the day. i wouldn’t want people to treat me differently at the end of the day than they did earlier in the day.

i follow up with powder first and then setting spray.

each dab of powder under my eyes strengthens the illusion of a good night’s sleep. each dab of powder on my smile lines carries behind it a joke that my friends told.

i close my eyes and spray. the fine mist coats every inch of my face. the setting spray isn’t aware that it was the very last step in a routine that determines how people treat me.

i’m lying in a hospital bed, lifeless. i hear people arguing over an annoying beep that went off around 10 seconds ago. they don’t know that i can hear them because every part of me that they knew is gone. the arguments come to a halt and i hear people sobbing quietly now. i am still here. darkness washes over me, and i’m back. i am alive again.

there is a beautiful thing inside me. a feeling, a sensation, maybe. i know it’s beautiful because of how i feel when i share it with those around me. it’s been growing since the day i was born and i’ve been nurturing it ever since, often at the cost of my sanity.

i call it kindness, they call it naivety.

i question whether what i’ve been nurturing has been a parasite all this time. slowly eating away at my insides until they rot. until i am an empty vessel only meant to satisfy the needs of anyone who dares to ask.

i push the thought away, because how could the thing that makes up the very essence of my mother be a parasite? what i failed to see then was that my mother was a severe people pleaser. the very values she instilled in me; the only thing i felt i was good for couldn’t possibly be the thing to bring upon my demise.

i kept on giving until i had nothing left. even then, i still found myself scrounging for something to give so that they wouldn’t be disappointed in me.

i never questioned anyone before i agreed to give. i never had second thoughts about handing over every last part of myself to them.

it was only when i felt i’d ran out of things to give that i realized i should’ve kept more for myself. being too nice was starting to make my insides rot. i gave not only to those i loved but to those whose desire knew no bounds and whose heart had no remorse. kindness no longer felt like a beautiful part of me.

it felt ugly. it felt painful.

and so one night, with my silent crying serving as background noise, i started ripping out every part of me that made me kind. i reached inside my body and ripped it all out until there was nothing left. i was no longer a prey to the soul that kept on giving and never once had the audacity to ask.

the damage done by the parasite still lingered. i questioned myself every time i said no to somebody even when it felt perfectly reasonable to do so. i beat myself up over not having anything to give to those who asked. kindness was forced out of my body after feeding on it for all my life, so this change felt wrong. it felt evil. all the same, it felt liberating.

with that, i decided to embrace the fact that i was no longer consumed by kindness. i would have to get reacquainted with who i was when i didn’t have a parasite feeding on me.

the first step in this journey was to stop feeling like my actions were rooted in evil simply because they weren’t coming from a place of all-consuming kindness. the next step was to figure it out as i go and to hate myself less for not knowing.

with each passing day, i blamed myself less. i hated myself less.

i resented the thought of ever being afflicted with that parasite even more. i think i’ve made it now.

hugs hugs hugs (please don’t lose yourself under the weight of being kind)

just be normal.

as a child, that phrase echoed in my head all day long, but it felt especially amplified when i was around other people. truthfully, i still hear it sometimes— i’ve just gotten better at tuning it out.

i can’t remember the exact point in time i figured it out but i just woke up one day knowing that i wasn’t like other people. growing up, i was no stranger to adults telling me things like, “can you act normal?” but i never thought there was anything wrong with not being normal. i wasn’t sure what normal was supposed to be because it seemed like everyone had a different idea of what normal was.

holding onto that perspective, i still felt different when i was around other people, so i tried with all my strength to stick to the things everyone else defined as normal.

i was suddenly too aware of how i walked. i was too aware of where my hands rested when i was standing in front of other people. i was too aware of how long i was staring into a person’s eyes while they were talking to me.

you can’t stare at the floor. you can’t stare for too long. control the intensity of your gaze. you have to listen to what they’re saying. you also have to come up with an appropriate response to let them know you’re listening- oh wait, but you aren’t because you’re too focused on perfecting your eye contact with the person in front of you.

being a teenager meant that my differences reflected in every aspect of my life besides just the obvious social difficulties. for the lack of a better term, i was always more awkward compared to my peers, so i tried to compensate for that by forcing myself to fit in with them in every other way.

i was listening to the kind of music they liked. it mostly sounded like noise to me but i still listened so that they’d think i had something in common with them.

i watched the shows they’d always talk about. i never had the opportunity to talk about them because i was never included in conversations. i was happy to listen because, deep down, i never wanted to talk anyway.

i looked up what the figures of speech they used often meant so i wouldn’t miss out on parts of the conversation. i tried to interpret their use of sarcastic language but i failed almost every time because they would just laugh whenever i gave a genuine response to their ironic comments.

i still didn’t give up. i’m close enough, i thought, just a little more.

i was too afraid of feeling more different than i already did, so i decided their style would be my style too. the things they held resentment for became things i held resentment for. the things they respected became things i respected and everything they laughed at i found hilarious too without a second thought. i felt like i didn’t have the liberty of choosing between being myself or being liked, and so just like most teenagers, i chose what i desired most which was to be liked and accepted. i lost all sense of individuality in chasing normality.

if you’re at a point where you’re thinking to yourself, god she’s practically lost herself, have they accepted her now?

the answer to that would be, no, they haven’t.

i was only so good at pretending. underneath my relatively normal exterior, i was just a teenage girl who was unexplainably different. my parents overlooked it because girls are supposed to be a little sensitive and shy. my teachers overlooked it because i was a “pleasure to have in class”. the girls and boys my age, however, found it difficult to overlook the things that made me a lot less like them.

i never initiated conversations with people because i never felt the need to. i never joined in on group conversations because they felt too overwhelming. there was too much to keep track of and there’s always the inevitable fear of being completely ignored. i often didn’t realize i was being made fun of. i was always too honest when i wasn’t supposed to be and i failed to realize that was a bad thing. i mostly kept to myself when i never had anything important to say to other people; it sort of felt like everyone around me hated me for that.

when i look back at the younger version of myself, i realize i haven’t changed at all. i’ve just grown more confident in being a socially awkward person. i feel awful for the younger version of myself who, with no hesitation whatsoever, accepted the weight of being completely burnt out due to faking her entire personality because she thought she wouldn’t be liked by anyone otherwise.

i now know that the right people will like me for who i am. all the messy and awkward and annoying parts of me. those who didn’t were never my people to begin with.

people would judge me for being obnoxiously loud just as they judge me for being incredibly quiet. as i write this, i realize the solution to not being judged may be finding a good middle ground between the two, but the fact is that would be “normal” and why would i ever want to be normal when i just so easily can be myself?

i’m a strong believer of the concept of normality being a social construct that’s defined differently by each person who speaks of it. to me, being normal means not being normal at all.

i wish i could hug younger me but since i can’t i’ll just give a virtual hug to everybody else who feels this way right now (or who’s ever felt this way). you’re not alone :’)

warning: def tmi

my clitoris has never felt the touch of a man. she has only ever known the familiarity of the hand that has stimulated her since the day she first begged for touch and that’s all she’s craved dearly since.

it’s now night time, slow music in the background, no lover by my side and my clitoris is no longer yearning to be touched.

and she hasn’t for the past four months.

it’s hard to know why and hard to describe how but she just fell silent one day and persisted with it.

somewhere between the last time my fingers created magic under my covers and my first sexual encounter with a man, my body lost the ability to desire sex.

this change felt foreign to me.

i first noticed it when i hadn’t had the desire to touch myself in over a week. i wasn’t particularly occupied with anything else, and, even if i were stressed (which i wasn’t), this usually helped relieve my stress.

however, it didn’t last long the first time around. for a short period of time, it had returned. it was different this time because now my body only longed for the touch of another person. intimacy built through connection— or so i thought.

with that, i opened myself up to another person. a vulnerable moment abruptly turned into something that would shape all of my future experiences with intimacy.

admitting this does not necessarily give power to the other person, but it does give me hope that i can heal and retrieve what was once mine. after all, acceptance is the first step towards healing.

a negative experience is all my brain associates with sex now, and so the thought of willingly touching myself never crosses my mind anymore.

it feels overwhelming because i’d have to start by getting rid of the thoughts my brain keeps circling back to everytime i even think about sex.

on rare occasions i’ll try to reintroduce the concept of pleasure to my body but all it does now is resist.

feeling like a stranger in my own body is not something i’d ever anticipated for myself. it feels unfair that i’m left to deal with this on my own; i’m confused, frustrated and sad.

i crave closeness and intimacy in all its forms that don’t involve sex. i wish to be kissed but i don’t want your hands all over my body. i want to be held close as i listen to the sound of your heart beating gently, and i want that moment to be enough for the both us.

here’s to waiting patiently for the day my clitoris finds her voice again

what it means to be a 13 year old girl is something my father will never know and something my mother has long forgotten.

when i turned 13, i got my first period. it was painful, the sensory issues from it were unbearable and repeatedly hearing that i’d now turned into a woman felt agonizing. i was just a child; why should i have to navigate turning into a woman overnight? i didn’t choose this.

i also started liking a girl for the first time ever— or maybe it was just the first time i accepted it for what it was. how that ended is a story for another day.

when i turned 13, i started picking apart my body. i was never happy with what i saw in the mirror and i punished myself for that by giving up all the food that brought me joy.

i started fighting with my mother over the smallest things. it may have been my hormones or the fact that she resented me for being a hormonal teenager like she once was.

when i turned 13, i realized that my father will never see me again as he used to before. sometimes it felt like he couldn’t look me in the eye. like he hated me so much for growing up; a natural process i played no part in and had no control over. believe me i would want to remain a child forever if i had the choice.

when i turned 13, i started experiencing competitiveness from every girl around me who was also the same age. no one was safe— not even my closest friends. society pit us against each other and we did little to resist it.

everyone wanted to be skinnier, they all wanted to be chosen by a boy and they were constantly trying to be prettier than one another. i wouldn’t blame us for feeling that way because media and the people around us led us to believe that those should be the things of utmost value to a typical teenage girl. nothing else really mattered.

walking into school with sad music blasting through my headphones, it felt like i was entering a different world each morning. the distance between my parents who didn’t understand me and i grew further; yet i grew closer, at least by physical proximity, to the girls who understood me but pretended they didn’t because it is embarrassing to admit that you’re just like other girls.

ironically, i never did feel like other girls. the ones who effortlessly fit in, the ones who made friends without trying, the ones who didn’t turn every interaction they were a part of into something painfully awkward.

nights in my room at 13 consisted of me pausing my music and begging god to make me normal. i was told god didn’t like people who religiously listened to music but i needed some place to channel my devotion because i didn’t care to give it to a god who never listened.

knowing that, for 5 minutes every night, i still gave god a chance to listen to me if he existed. with every ounce of strength and hope a 13 year old girl could have, i prayed.

he never listened, and so i stand before you at 19, still feeling alienated from the rest of the world.

long story short, if you’ve never been a 13 year old girl, you should probably feel blessed. if you have, i just know you emerged from it wiser and tougher.

i am stronger now and i poured all the hope that prayer gave me back into myself, but safe to say, i wouldn’t want to relive being 13.

you’ve wronged me in a way that feels like a violation to every part of me. i’ll tell you it’s alright and i’ll walk away. i’ll be hurt and i’ll cry and the tears will stop me from telling you how i wish you’d go fuck yourself.

i feel more than most people do and, naturally, that applies to anger too. i never express it though, and i say it comes from a place of wanting things to remain calm but it really is the result of a man’s voice in my mind.

unfortunately, the man happens to be my father. his voice echoes in my head each time someone does something that makes me angry. he’s telling my mother that she’s being irrational for being upset over something i, a little girl then, know she has every right to be upset about. i still agree with him because i want to keep the peace. i promise myself that i will not let a man deem me irrational simply because i am a woman expressing her feelings, and with that, i suppress my desire to express anger altogether.

i am embarrassed of being seen as an emotional woman because, after all, what am i if not a good woman free of hysteria? what do i bring to your life but my lack of rage at your actions that bring me rage?

i’m 19 now and find myself incapable of being upset over even the worst things a person could do to me. expression of anger feels like a foreign concept to me.

i’ve come to realize that how i feel about being angry stems mostly from the fact that i am a woman. a woman raised by a man who seems to think of women as less than nonetheless.

i was at a bar watching a world cup game a few weeks ago and all i could hear were men yelling, almost from a place of being enraged, over a ball.

in that moment, i couldn’t help but wonder if they ever felt like they were being irrational for being angry over something that was completely out of their control. i know they don’t; they’ve never been made to feel that way. their emotions are always valid regardless of the context.

however, i could guarantee you that at least some of those men have, at some point in their life, made a woman in their life feel that they were being irrational for expressing feelings that were more likely than not relevant and valid in that moment.

i actually think that women are not expressing anger nearly as often as we should. contrary to what most men believe, we’re not even close to being as hysterical as we should be. yell more, cuss at men more, crash out more, cry more.

and if i start yelling about my very real problems as men do over balls, then what?

last week i did something that 14 year old me would’ve absolutely resented herself for. i ate an entire tub of ben and jerry’s chunky monkey in one sitting.

i’d started my period earlier in the day and, as one does, really only wanted to obliterate something sickeningly sweet. i picked my poison and it happened to be a tub of ice cream.

the banana ice cream was slightly melted- the perfect texture- with an abundance of large fudge chunks and a non-skimpy amount of walnuts balancing out the sweetness from the fudge and banana. a blend of flavours so perfect you’d like to personally thank the person responsible for coming up with it.

i put on pulp fiction and i started eating my ice cream straight from the tub; i didn’t portion it out like i usually do.

mesmerized by how effortlessly cool mia wallace was, i took a bite of my ice cream. and another. and another….

before i knew it, i’d gotten to the bottom of the tub and the movie was coming to an end. i’d let myself eat an entire tub of ice cream and i noticed that i didn’t feel the slightest bit guilty about it.

thoughts about restricting myself from eating the next day didn’t cross my mind. i didn’t care to consider the fact that i may have gone over my calories for the day. i certainly had no regrets over letting myself consume riotous amounts of sugar.

instead, i found myself already looking forward to buying another tub. i accepted the fact that i enjoyed something i’d have considered insanely unhealthy in the past rather than hating myself for it.

a day filled with pain and heavy emotions calls for indulging in one of the things that brings you happiness and you do not need to beat yourself up over it.

i didn’t beat myself up over it but i know she would’ve. the 14 year old who counted the calories in everything down to the amount of oil in food even though her lack of energy made doing the smallest tasks that much more difficult. the 16 year old who wouldn’t let go of her food rules because she wouldn’t be able to look in the mirror if she did. the 18 year old who only looked forward to moving away for school because she’d finally be able to get away with eating one meal a day or less.

somewhere between then and now i’ve found peace in losing the rigidity surrounding food. it’s difficult to pinpoint the exact moment it happened, or how, but all i know is that i’m grateful it happened.

to more tubs of ice cream demolished in one sitting!

“i can’t believe i almost lost my virginity over lindt dark chocolate truffles”.

this, unfortunately, is verbatim what i wrote in my journal a week ago.

after my first boyfriend- who also happened to be the first person i was ever intimate with- broke up with me, it took me a while to process everything that happened over the course of our relationship. i refrained from writing about it because i was afraid of what i’d figure out. i was afraid i’d have to face everything i was trying so hard to ignore throughout our relationship.

i finally found the courage to write about how i felt when i was with him about a week ago. this sentence is from the first entry i wrote about him; a wildly detailed narration of the day he broke up with me. i surprised myself with how much of the day i remembered.

the day before he broke up with me, he bought me my favourite chocolates. i was touched by the gesture because i’d never had another person remember a small detail like that about me, with the exception of my friends and family. for the first time in my life, i felt seen by someone i was also romantically attracted to. i wasn’t used to receiving romantic attention this way- yeah, i am the girl who was basically invisible to boys for the most part of the formative years of her life.

that tiny gesture felt like something of great intensity to me that i felt i owed him something from my side too. i feel disheartened admitting it now but the only thing i thought would really make him happy was sex. so that’s what i tried giving him.

for me to feel that i owed him something for the most bare minimum act someone could’ve done for me feels inherently wrong. for me to consider giving him a part of me so vulnerable and so intimate over something so small feels even worse.

women are usually raised to accept and, in some cases, even praise the absolute least amount of effort that comes from a man. the women who barely received any romantic attention growing up naturally tend to romanticize every small gesture a man sends their way.

writing about it in my journal did in fact force me to face the things i’d been avoiding. i never received anything special throughout our relationship. sometimes i didn’t even receive small acts of kindness or consideration. but i still stayed. i stayed because he may have learned, with time, to be a better partner.

it’s hard to accept but choosing to stay in a situation that isn’t fulfilling you isn’t an act of love towards the other person but more so an act of resentment towards yourself.

you could fill your own cup better than a random man ever could, but you still choose to settle for him. you may not have experienced better but that doesn’t mean you don’t deserve better.

as of today, i still remain unpenetrated but now with an empty bag of chocolates sitting on my nightstand i haven’t yet gotten around to throwing out.

you wake up still exhausted from being up late at night talking to a guy you met on a dating app about nothing seemingly important. you know it won’t go anywhere but it kept you occupied when the rest of the world was quiet and the bad thoughts came rushing back in.

you spend the better part of your day checking for other potential matches. you don’t really think you’re into any of them but you convince yourself that you are because it’s starting to feel like there’s no one out there meant for you.

mindlessly swiping through profiles of people who each have a unique story of their own, you’ve found someone you could see yourself being into. you shoot your shot, they match with you, you talk to them for a while … it seems like you’ve clicked- only for them to start taking half a day or more to respond to you. you start spiraling. before you know it, you’ve tied your self worth to someone you’ve only known through 6 of their best photos from their camera roll.

on the other hand, you may end up meeting someone who’s actually enthusiastic about you. someone who’s curious, someone who cares, someone who makes time for you. this could go one of two ways- one; congrats, you’re one of the few lucky people who’ve met the love of their life through a dating app! or … two; if you’re slightly unlucky, you’re just a victim to the awful surge of lovebombing we’re currently seeing in modern dating. they make your life feel beautiful for two weeks and, in a split second, it’s crickets.

at this point in time, you start questioning if all of this really matters in the grand scheme of things. sure, love adds value to your life, but love isn’t just something that shows up through romantic relationships. love is in my favourite sweet treats, films, cats, my bestfriend, music and nature.

you realize you’ve only been trying to force a connection with someone because you think there’s things you can only receive through another person. start complimenting yourself if you long to be complimented, start taking yourself out on nice dates if you’ve always wanted to be spoiled, start listening to your body and mind if you crave security- show up for yourself!! everything you could ever want can be found within yourself.

all this to say i’ve come to the realization that dating isn’t for me and i hereby retire.

psa: no, im NOT being pessimistic i genuinely realized i have no desire for a relationship 😊 im lucky enough to be able to give myself everything i need and, frankly, the only thing a romantic partner would add to my life is an insurmountable amount of anxiety