For Women Who Are Difficult To Love

you are a horse running alone
and he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

Warsan Shire is a Kenyan-born Somali poet and writer. She is 24 years old. Twenty. Four.

First up, my very favourite, David Berman:

About the Party

I loved seeing you the other night
(and I think everyone noticed!)
which was the first time I’m estimating
since the Oak Street Psychic Fair
when I first saw your ears
as the two beautiful pink wheels they are
and your powerful boyfriend unnecessarily claimed
that I only spread unhappiness with my harmonica playing.
People see each other all the time
and they can’t always figure out how to act,
so it sometimes seems as if the dandelions
growing silently behind the high school
are the only truly outstanding reaction
to existence,
and perhaps because I thought
I had no argument with the world
until the backyard mosquitoes
started penalizing my hands
and Wayne of Wayne’s Hair Systems
and Jimmy Food Hill combined
to not let me near you,
it came as such a horrible shock to notice
you looked so damn beautiful
beneath Bob’s silver maples
that I about shit my heart out.

Of course, this is a little ethnocentric because absolutely there are countries and cultures where women are treated as being “less than” and the idea of treating them any differently is ignored. I know how lucky I am to live in Canada and I realize that less than 100 years ago, many of the rights and privileges I have now didn’t exist (check out this awesome interactive map that shows women’s voting rights around the world). But sometimes I’m stopped in my tracks by other women who struggle with what it means to be feminist and all the negative connotations that word still holds for some people.

For example, I recently facilitated a television interview where a (young, beautiful, successful) woman was asked if she thought it was still OK for a man to hold open doors and pick up the check on a date, or if that was anti-feminist (I know, I know) and her answer was along the lines of “Well, I’m an independent woman but I’m not a feminist, so please hold open doors” etc. She operates under the belief that “feminism” means man-hating. This is still a ‘thing’.

I was lucky to grow up in a family surrounded by strong women who taught me to be independent and take no shit. My Mom, who was adamant that any relationship I was going to be in should be with someone who treated me with respect. My Aunt, who taught me about feminism in my early teens. My Nanny, my sisters, my friends – there are so many incredible women in my life that inspire and teach me. Thank you, I love you, girl power.

There are always stories about bullying in the news and way too often it’s a tragic report about how a child took their own life because of how they were being treated. When I read these stories my heart aches for these kids. And I relate to them, because I was bullied.

It started early, when I was about 8. Three neighborhood girls Jana, Jill and Jennifer, made teasing me their favourite after-school activity. Games of hide-and-go-seek that would end with me alone and the girls gone to giggle in one of their bedrooms I was never invited to play in. When I would go home they would come to my door, sweet as pie to my Mom – Can Allison come out? I never told my Mom, just went back outside and counted-down the minutes until dinner. (Coincidentally, this also happens to the main character in Margaret Atwood’s incredible novel Cat’s Eye and when I read it, years later, I cried and cried).

My Mom had me change schools for grade six but by the time I got to Junior High, my “new kid” status was worn off and the friends I had made went on being friends without me. It didn’t help that I was a bit socially awkward (who isn’t at 13!?) and overweight. I remember a couple of girls I did hang out with would ditch me constantly. Would literally run away from me, laughing. You can’t come was something I heard a lot. One night, they called me and said that they weren’t my friends and would never be. I remember looking into the mirror for a long time after that conversation and considering how to make all the anger and hurt I was feeling stop. Obviously “the way out” crossed my mind, but the anger I also felt at these horrible girls pushed me past those thoughts.

The sad part is I didn’t even have it as bad as some of the other kids. And when I got to high school, things got a lot better: I made real friends and gained self-confidence. I even got the satisfaction of having those cruel girls from eighth grade ask me to hang out with them again. (I passed)

I wanted to share this story here not because I want you to feel sorry for me, but because for so long I felt ashamed of having been bullied. I would lie about my time in JR High to my closest friends and my parents never knew the full extent of what I dealt with. There was this lingering fear that, if my friends knew that I used to be a “loser”, they wouldn’t want to be friends with me. What’s more ridiculous than that thought was how long it took me to get past it. Years and years and years. Such a small fraction of my life story but it left its mark on me for too long.

Still, if I had to go back and relive everything, I would. Because dealing with bullies made me a stronger friend and a more compassionate person. Rumi said: The wound is the place where the light enters you. There will always be bullies. There aren’t enough pink shirts on the planet to stop people from doing hateful things and using hateful words. But I guess my message is Hold On – because things will get better (that’s science) and you will one day look back on all that shit and be proud that it’s part of your life story. And a better person for it.

Oh, and also that kids between 8-15 are inherently assholes.

Thanks for hearing me out guys. XO

February’s almost finished and each day that the temperature stays above zero, I think ‘Summer soon’. I actually try and fight these thoughts, because no more thinking in terms of what’s to come. But it’s close to impossible. I thrive in the summer. Sunshine turns me into a Disney Princess. I will hum in the morning if I wake up to sun pouring through my window. It just works on me.

Sunshine, sand and water.

My friend’s folks have a place on Lake Erie that gets the greatest waves in the summer. When they come up, we always run out and let the water toss us around a bit. The force knocks you down and pulls you up, pushes the air from your lungs and hair into your eyes. If you go out deep enough, before the waves crest, and relax, your body becomes like a fishing buoy, which is also fun but less exciting. Afterwards, on the beach, we’d splay out – exhausted, and starving in that weird hungry way the body gets after being in water for a while. I love that feeling.

I can’t wait to do this again. But I’m trying not to think these thoughts.

Summer soon. Summer soon.

Guys, I feel really grown up. The question of “But when will I actually feel like an adult?” has been answered and the answer is Right Now because I just read through all my old journals circa 1995-1998.

If you were to piece together my life in those 3 years, you would assume all my time was spent swinging between being obsessively in love and intensely devastated by the absence of love. I really felt all the feelings (cough-stilldo-cough) and I thought it’d be fun to share some excerpts, accompanied by my basement-bedroom soundtrack a.k.a. the Greatest Playlist Ever.

Teenage Girl in the 90s by astokes on Grooveshark

Oh and this is all going to be poetry. Teenage poetry (!!!!)

“I’m not who I was, who you made me to be. I long since shed that skin, now I want to grow wings.” – Allison S. Be A Star.

I actually wrote this in quotations as if this was a lyric from a song. A song apparently called Be A Star.

It’s our sky and they’re our stars and if I were to die I’d try to get to yours and we’re dreaming of each other now I want you even more.

If you were to do a shot for every time the word “star” is mentioned in these journals, you would be drunk after the first 12 pages.

Don’t want to think of yesterday, tonight you told me, so I say – Forget you. Forget all about it. And fuck you. Want me? You can’t have it.

Growing up right before my/our eyes! I’m proudest of the ones like this. There’s another called I’m A Woman that I just can’t with…but still proud!

Blind to what the silence tells us, two sisters in a strangers world. We break what’s singing stories to us, we smash what’s turning day to night and atomic bombs and guns won’t hurt us. We’re winning war without a fight.

My friend Tiffany and I would drink Peach Schnapps, listen to Tori Amos and write poems together all.the.time. They typically involve us killing boys, being vampires/witches and being really hungry.

All it takes is a touch to make me start and a shove in the right direction. So suddenly, I’m there. Clinging to dreams where comfort’s so consuming. You didn’t even know you were up for selection.

This is underlined in my journal and I get why because this was my MO for falling in “love”: think a guy is pretty cool – start talking about him to friends – get encouraged by friends – drink two Max Ice beer and kiss him behind the Remax – fall madly insanely in love and think about nothing else but that person until it’s over – and Repeat. Teenage nutshell.

In conclusion, I think these journals might be the best books I’ve ever read. Including the Nine Inch Nails song lyrics written out, my High School resume (On swim team. Plays piano. Have Math tutor to bring up grade.) and a list of “Potentials” consisting of dudes I wanted to make my boyfriend. How was I ever so young?

Love, We Must Part Now – Phillip Larkin

Love, we must part now: do not let it be
Calamitious and bitter. In the past
There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last
Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,
Never were hearts more eager to be free,
To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I
No longer hold them; we are husks, that see
The grain going forward to a different use.

There is regret. Always, there is regret.
But it is better that our lives unloose,
As two tall ships, wind-mastered, wet with light,
Break from an estuary with their courses set,
And waving part, and waving drop from sight.

Another of my favourite Yeats poems while you’re still reeling:

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams

Irish love.