Lower Expectations

A Clip-on Emo Fringe

(5 Min Read)

When I was nineteen or twenty, I broke up with my first real boyfriend. Let’s call him Alan, even though he wasn’t a middle-aged man with blue, straight leg jeans and white New Balance sneakers. He was a short, skinny guy with a clip-on emo fringe (because he didn’t have the hairline for a real one) and the skinniest black jeans that still managed to sag around the bum (because he didn’t have the bum to fill it out). I’m aware I have not painted a good picture already.

I’d had a boyfriend before Alan, but I decided it didn’t count because he cheated on his long-term partner with me and then cheated on me with that same person not long after. Even at freshly 18, I knew that was something in which I didn’t want to get involved. Or, perhaps more accurately, I didn’t mind getting involved when I was the third person. At the time, I didn’t care that I was seeing someone who had a boyfriend, I was just happy that someone was showing an interest in me for what felt like the first time in my life.

But when I realised he’d gone back to his partner, at least one, I sent him the most 18-year-old text anyone has ever sent, asking him if he loved this other person. He said yes. I asked him if he loved me and he said that it was too soon to tell, we’d only been dating a few months, and I was shocked and appalled. I didn’t love him, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t have the decency to fall in love with me immediately. So I broke up with him.

Later, when I was 19, I met Alan, and after a few months, something changed in me. I’d stopped being ‘fun’. This wasn’t my observation, this was the observation of people around me, namely Alan. I used to go out, I used to want to do things, and I no longer did. What I wanted to do was rot in bed all weekend. Not because I had been previously cheated on. I don’t remember really caring and maybe that’s why I don’t count the first boyfriend as a real boyfriend. But whatever caused the fun decline, it came on slow. There is no definable inciting incident, I just started to feel heavy all the time. Whenever Alan was begging me to come out with him to see his friends, beseeching me from beside the bed while I hid under the covers, stopping every few words to blow his fake fringe out of his eyes, I couldn’t bear to look at him or anyone. And not because the kind of people he called friends had never been able to contribute to an interesting conversation in their lives and preferred to engage in rounds of “Like, you know?” and “So me.” It was just because I was tired. I couldn’t shake it, I was exhausted and the effort it took to straighten my hair (it was the early 2000s) and find something to wear that didn’t make me want to order a pizza to join me under the sheets was an effort I couldn’t manage. Perhaps you know this feeling, whoever you are. Have you ever felt too heavy to do anything? You can’t reply directly, of course, because a blog is a decidedly selfish mode of communicating with people where I get to say everything and you get to say nothing. But maybe one day, if we meet, you can tell me if you’ve ever felt so heavy that it was like a weighted blanket was slowly lowered onto you without you noticing, like a lobster in a pot. And you can’t take it off but you also don’t really want to take it off because it’s comfortable and the blanket holds you to the couch or holds you to the bed and you hate yourself, you are disgusting, you haven’t showered in days, what is wrong with you, but also, you would not move for anything in the world and somehow it also feels like the safest place to be. This kind of lifestyle, unfortunately, has consequences. Of course, I still went to work during the week because I taking time off was a step too far in my mind and my mother instilled in me that work is important and must be respected. I don’t know why that is, maybe because she gave up her job to raise my brothers and I. So I worked during the week and on the weekend, I went to my boyfriend’s house to sleep for two days. When he noticed my withdrawal from the world, he began to lose interest in the relationship from which I drew my only real comfort. Not because it was a good relationship, but because it was something to do. As long as we were together on the weekend, eating pizza and having sex and staying up late and waking up late, I didn’t have to think about the things I didn’t want to think about. And it worked; I never had to deal with myself, I never had to think about why I was disinterested in everything.

I’ve just remembered that I cheated on him once, accidentally. Sort of. I have to put it in here before I forget and never get around to telling you. And yes, I know what I said above about not enjoying being cheated on and then I’m doing it to someone else. Wow, you’re judgemental today.

Look, it’s the only time I’ve cheated on someone (update: since I first wrote that, it still is. Look at me!) I think it was nice to feel wanted. And I suppose it wasn’t really an accident, but it wasn’t planned. It was cheating-manslaughter, not cheating-murder. I was on webcam with a sort-of friend from Queensland because it was 2008 and I guess that’s what you did. I wanted to feel something and he ‘wanted help’ and at the time, I thought it was my job to help because sometimes, low self-esteem makes you too willing to please people and too scared to say no to them. I wasn’t attracted to him, but he was attracted to me, or so he said, and I’ve found throughout my life that’s really all I need to hear. As a thank you for being attracted to me, even slightly, even if you’re pretending, we can probably have sex. Also, he had an incredibly large penis for the size of the rest of him and frankly, that was fascinating. Not in the way a kid is when they see a toy they really want, more like when you can’t look away if someone appears to have too many teeth and you’re wondering how they fit so many in there.

The next day I learned a valuable lesson about making sure you’re sending a text to the right person when I sent Alan a ‘don’t tell my boyfriend about last night’ text and immediately received a reply that said, ‘come over tonight. We need to talk’. That night, I offered a very unconvincing lie, the details of which I have completely forgotten, but I remember at the time knowing he would never believe it. He accepted my apology and we seemed to move on, but everything went downhill after that. Eventually, it seemed like a good idea to just end it. I don’t know why, I think things were just getting complicated and rather than talk about it all, I thought a break up was the best option. He stood in front of me, dead-faced, not putting up a fight or crying while I told him, spitting out half-words through my stuttering and choking, my face wet with salty tears. I hated letting him down, terrified he might not like me after that. I cried the whole way home and called my brother who told me to pull over or I’d crash. It was raining because of course it was. When I got home, the rain kept going. Even when it stopped, I felt like it hadn’t. It didn’t for months.

I found out after the breakup that he’d already been seeing someone else. Maybe that’s why he didn’t care about my cheating.