{"id":6107,"date":"2017-05-07T14:55:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-07T11:55:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.magdalenabiela.com\/?p=6107"},"modified":"2017-05-07T14:55:50","modified_gmt":"2017-05-07T11:55:50","slug":"almost-a-poem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.magdalenabiela.com\/?p=6107","title":{"rendered":"Almost a poem"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"17\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Almost a poem<\/p>\n

He loved me. A six-O kind of love: He looooooved me. But he didn\u2019t love me, me. He loved a girl who doesn\u2019t exist. I was pretending, the way I often did, pretending to have a personality. I can\u2019t help it, it\u2019s what I\u2019ve always done: the way some women change fashion regularly, I change personalities. What persona feels good, what\u2019s coveted, what\u2019s au courant? I think most people do this, they just don\u2019t admit it, or else they settle on one persona because they\u2019re too lazy or stupid to pull off a switch.
\nThat date I was playing the girl who was in style, the girl a man like him wants: the Cool Girl. Men always say that as the defining compliment, don\u2019t they?
\nShe\u2019s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she\u2019s hosting the world\u2019s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don\u2019t mind, I\u2019m the Cool Girl.
\nMen actually think this girl exists. Maybe they\u2019re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl.
\nFor a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men \u2013 friends, coworkers, strangers \u2013 giddy over these awful pretender women, and I\u2019d want to sit these men down and calmly say: “You are not dating a woman, you are dating a woman who has watched too many movies written by socially awkward men who\u2019d like to believe that this kind of woman exists and might kiss them”.
\nI\u2019d want to grab the poor guy by his lapels or messenger bag and say: “The bitch doesn\u2019t really love chili dogs that much” \u2013 no one loves chili dogs that much!
\nAnd the Cool Girls are even more pathetic: they\u2019re not even pretending to be the woman they want to be, they\u2019re pretending to be the woman a man wants them to be.
\nOh, and if you\u2019re not a Cool Girl, I beg you not to believe that your man doesn\u2019t want the Cool Girl. It may be a slightly different version \u2013 maybe he\u2019s a vegetarian, so Cool Girl loves seitan and is great with dogs; or maybe he\u2019s a hipster artist, so Cool Girl is a tattooed, bespectacled nerd who loves comics.
\nThere are variations to the window dressing, but believe me, he wants Cool Girl, who is basically the girl who likes every fu..ing thing he likes and doesn\u2019t ever complain.
\n(How do you know you\u2019re not Cool Girl? Because he says things like: \u2018I like strong women.\u2019 If he says that to you, he will at some point f..k someone else. Because \u2018I like strong women\u2019 is code for \u2018I hate strong women.\u2019).
\nI waited patiently \u2013 years \u2013 for the pendulum to swing the other way, for men to start reading Jane Austen, learn how to knit, pretend to love cosmos, organize scrapbook parties, and make out with each other while we leer. And then we\u2019d say, “Yeah, he\u2019s a Cool Guy”.
\nBut it never happened. Instead, women across the nation colluded in our degradation! Pretty soon Cool Girl became the standard girl. Men believed she existed \u2013 she wasn\u2019t just a dreamgirl one in a million. Every girl was supposed to be this girl, and if you weren\u2019t, then there was something wrong with you.
\nBut it\u2019s tempting to be Cool Girl. For someone like me, who likes to win, it\u2019s tempting to want to be the girl every guy wants. When I met him, I knew immediately that was what he wanted, and for him, I guess I was willing to try. I will accept my portion of blame. The thing is, I was crazy about him at first. I found him perversely exotic, a good old boy.
\nHe was so damn nice to be around. He teased things out in me that I didn\u2019t know existed: a lightness, a humor, an ease. It was as if he hollowed me out and filled me with feathers. He helped me be Cool Girl \u2013 I couldn\u2019t have been Cool Girl with anyone else. I wouldn\u2019t have wanted to. I can\u2019t say I didn\u2019t enjoy some of it: I ate a MoonPie, I walked barefoot, I stopped worrying. I watched dumb movies and ate chemically laced foods. I didn\u2019t think past the first step of anything, that was the key. I drank a Coke and didn\u2019t worry about how to recycle the can or about the acid puddling in my belly, acid so powerful it could strip clean a penny. We went to a dumb movie and I didn\u2019t worry about the offensive sexism or the lack of minorities in meaningful roles. I didn\u2019t even worry whether the movie made sense. I didn\u2019t worry about anything that came next. Nothing had consequence, I was living in the moment, and I could feel myself getting shallower and dumber. But also happy.
\nUntil him, I\u2019d never really felt like a person, because I was always me. Amazing ME has to be brilliant, creative, kind, thoughtful, witty, and happy. We just want you to be happy.
\nSo many lessons and opportunities and advantages, and I have never been taught how to be happy.
\nI remember always being baffled by other children. I would be at a birthday party and watch the other kids giggling and making faces, and I would try to do that, too, but I wouldn\u2019t understand why. I would sit there with the tight elastic thread of the birthday hat parting the pudge of my underchin, with the grainy frosting of the cake bluing my teeth, and I would try to figure out why it was fun.
\nWith him, I understood finally. Because he was so much fun. It was like dating a sea otter. He was the first naturally happy person I met who was my equal. He was brilliant and gorgeous and funny and charming and charmed. People liked him. Women loved him. I thought we would be the most perfect union: the happiest couple around. Not that love is a competition. But I don\u2019t understand the point of being together if you\u2019re not the happiest.
\nI was probably happier for those few years \u2013 pretending to be someone else \u2013 than I ever have been before or after. I can\u2019t decide what that means.
\nBut then it had to stop, because it wasn\u2019t real, it wasn\u2019t me. It wasn\u2019t me, baby! I thought you knew. I thought it was a bit of a game. I thought we had a wink-wink, don\u2019t ask, don\u2019t tell thing going. I tried so hard to be easy. But it was unsustainable. It turned out he couldn\u2019t sustain his side either: the witty banter, the clever games, the romance, and the wooing. It all started collapsing on itself.
\nI hated him for being surprised when I became me. I hated him for not knowing it had to end, for truly believing he had married this creature, this figment of the imagination of a million masturbatory men, semen-fingered and self-satisfied.
\nHe truly seemed astonished when I asked him to listen to me. He couldn\u2019t believe I didn\u2019t love wax-stripping my personality raw and loving him on request. That I did mind when he didn\u2019t show up for drinks with my friends.\u00a0 Again, I don\u2019t get it: if you let a man cancel plans or decline to do things for you, you lose. You don\u2019t get what you want. It\u2019s pretty clear. Sure, he may be happy, he may say you\u2019re the coolest girl ever, but he\u2019s saying it because he got his way. He\u2019s calling you a Cool Girl to fool you!
\nThat\u2019s what men do: they try to make it sound like you are the cool girl so you will bow to their wishes. Like a car salesman saying, “how much do you want to pay for this beauty?” when you didn\u2019t agree to buy it yet.
\nThat awful phrase men use: \u2018I mean, I know you wouldn\u2019t mind if I \u2026\u2019 Yes, I do mind. Just say it. Don\u2019t lose, you dumb little twat.
\nSo it had to stop. Committing to him, feeling safe with him, being happy with him, made me realize that there was a Real Me in there, and she was so much better, more interesting and complicated and challenging, than Cool Me.
\nHe wanted Cool Me anyway. Can you imagine, finally showing your true self to your spouse, your soul mate, and having him not like you?
\nSo that\u2019s how the hating first began. I\u2019ve thought about this a lot, and that\u2019s where it started, I think.<\/p>\n

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Gone girl<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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