It's Lonely Being a Bad Bitch

 I was 19 when I told Him, my now ex-boyfriend, that I was officially transferring to a different college so I could be with him. His immediate response came in a text, because he was still at the boarding school in Utah I graduated from the year before, and I was at Lewis and Clark in Portland, Oregon. Texting was our only form of communication at that time. He said he loved me, that he was so proud of me, that he couldn’t wait to start our future together. I didn’t realize when I first began the process of choosing to spend time with a boy over studying at an extremely expensive and very intellectually rigorous private college that a future with him would not give me what I wanted, or what I needed. I learned throughout our tumultuous relationship that only I could give that to myself, but within that line of thinking lies a problem I’m slowly learning to resolve. 

I spent a lot of my teenage years making bad investments. I mostly focused on myself, and I don’t mean that in a positive way. I focused on how depressed I was, how anxious I was, how disconnected I felt from my peers, how uninterested I was in doing well in school. I drank a lot of alcohol, I smoked a lot of cigarettes, I tried a lot of different drugs. I did pretty much everything I could to try and hide from my problems instead of facing them head on. I also focused a lot on Him, mostly because he liked to hide in the same ways I did. 

         

I wish I could say I chose this boy, but I didn’t. He chose me while we were at boarding school together, and I went along with his choice because no one had ever expressed their desires to be with me emotionally and physically quite as loudly as he did. I stayed with him throughout college because I had the irrational idea that being with him was a way of breaking free from the cycle of loneliness that led me down the road of deep depression. I thought spending time with Him meant that I was engaging with the world. So what if 99 percent of the moments we shared were just between us? So what if I cut off contact with my friends because he wanted me to spend more time with him? I’m not sitting in my room all day talking to myself like I did before I started dating, so I must be doing okay, I thought. I was wrong. Being in a relationship with Him was just another form of hiding. 

The majority of the time we spent together in college was in his dorm room, or his apartment, watching TV, having sex you could barely consider consensual, smoking weed, trying new drugs he bought off the deep web, and arguing. We spent four years doing that. Four fucking years! For years I was miserable and exhausted and sick of his shit.  I didn’t even like the dude that much, if I’m being honest. He was aggressive and arrogant and condescending and he rarely made me laugh. He stole money from me to buy heroin, he texted other girls after I fell asleep, and I woke up more than a few times to him pulling down my pants and jerking off to the view. I rarely called him out on his bad behavior because I really thought he was the only person who would ever want to be with me. My self-worth was so low I would have stayed with anyone who showed interest in me.

I knew our relationship was toxic. I heard my friends and older sister tell stories about their boyfriends, and their time together always seemed so magical, so freeing. Even their fights were romantic in some sense. Their stories didn’t sound anything like the stories I had to tell about Him. Yet, I felt a weird sense of validation being with Him and putting up with all his shitty nonsense year after year. For as long as I can remember, I’ve felt like I didn’t deserve a relationship with a happy ending. I didn’t think I deserved any attention at all from people outside my immediate family. I genuinely thought that I was a bad person, that I was born flawed and shouldn’t go out of my way to meet anybody, friends or otherwise, because I might contaminate the “good” people with my nasty attitude. I wasn’t sure of what my purpose was, but I was certain it included people who were up to no good. That’s what my relationship with Him was all about -- reinforcing a tragically negative idea I’d had about myself since I was in elementary school. 

I needed Him to teach me how valuable it can be to travel through the world with someone who isn’t you. I already knew from experience that wherever I go, there I am. I needed someone to teach me that wherever I go, others will always be there as well, and letting them into your inner circle will enrich your life in ways you never knew to be possible. I needed, oh how I needed, my first love to teach me how joyous it is to fall for someone and stay in their life for a long period of time. After Him I just felt jaded. I had no desire to meet anyone new. I didn’t want to get to know any new men, or let them get to know me. I just wanted to stay alone, forever. I’m a bad bitch. I don’t need no man. Fuck, I don’t even need friends. I repeated these words to myself as I listened to Dounia while prancing around my apartment in my hideous granny panties, feeling simultaneously free and devastated by my infinite freedom. 

I read recently that getting to know yourself means learning how to let go of the stories you’ve created in your head that limit you. For me, this means I’m going to have to let go of the narrative of the bad bitch. Instagram memes will tell you how fucking cool it is to be a bad bitch. I can tell you from experience it sucks going through life all on your own. 

I thought I was content walking through this world alone, but it turns out I’m not. I’m sick and tired of being bad, and I’m even more sick and tired of surrounding myself with people who are also bad. I’m ready to join the good people, the ones who are vulnerable with people they trust, respect, and truly care about. I’m not ashamed of the fact that I want my life to be rich in experiences, and I want those experiences to include men I know on an intimate level. 

I want to hear their laughter and the noises they make when tears roll down their cheeks. I want to know which foods they crave when they’ve been away from wherever they consider home to be for too long. I want to know what kinds of books they reach for, or what songs they put on when they are certain no one is watching. I want to know what they think about when they’re masturbating and just about to finish. I want to know which friends they call when they’re feeling sad, and who they reach for when they have exciting news they just can’t keep to themselves. I want to know the ways they process emotions in therapy. I also want to know the ways they avoid real and raw human connection. Do they drink too much? Hire a hooker? Spend all day in bed? Eat too many dumplings? I’m genuinely curious. I want to get to know a man on all the same levels that I know myself. I don’t need, or even want him to be “mine,” I just want to know him, and let him know me. I want this man to teach me all the lessons I missed out on with Him. 

In 2020 and beyond, I’m no longer going to tell people I’m happy being alone. Make no mistake, I’ll still be a bit of a bitch this year, but hopefully I’ll be a bitch who spends her nights getting eaten out by and having meaningful conversations with a boy who thinks I’m just as fucking fantastic as I think I am.