Chapter Twenty-Four
[LIVE] EXPLORE FOLLOWING FRIENDS FOR YOU
ViralVideosTranscribed
one hour ago
*Rustle of phone moving*
*click-clack of heels moving quickly across the floor*
Unidentified 1: [hissing] Why are you following her? Are you still filming this?
Unidentified 2: Yeah, shut up! She’s going to lose it again in a sec, she’s fucking nuts. Another crazy bitch. This is hilarious.
Unidentified 1: [very quietly] It’s not. You’re being really horrible.
LC: [in a high pitch] Can I have my coat, please? Here’s my ticket. Thank you.
Cloakroom attendant: Sure.
LC: Sorry, there’s cake on the ticket – can you still make out the number?
There’s cake everywhere to be honest. It’s in my handbag, too, see?
[laughs maniacally] Look at the cheesecake in my hairbrush!
It’s a good job there’s already cheesecake in my hair, isn’t it?
Maybe it would make a nice hair mask? Some creamy cheesecake might finally sort out my very dry ends. I wish I knew a really good shampoo.
Cloakroom attendant: [sounding bored] I’ve seen worse. You had a scarf as well, right? [rustling noise and long pause] Here you go.
*sound of coat being put on*
LC: [half-sob] I don’t even like this coat, you know? I got it because I saw Victoria Beckham wearing one like it and I think she’s cool. Her and David Beckham seem really happy don’t they? Apart from all the… rumours.
Cloakroom attendant: [still sounding a bit bored] Er, are you okay?
LC: [sitting on the floor] No, I’m not okay actually. [more half-sobs] You know, I did everything for that guy in there. And I don’t even know why! I don’t recognise the woman I became with him.
Cloakroom attendant: Who? Which woman?
LC: Me woman! Who was she? Who was the sad ’50s housewife I became for him?
Who was she who slipped into that trad wife bullshit role?
I thought it was what I wanted, but do I?
Why? [getting louder] It fucking sucks the way we sublimate ourselves for men.
I see women do it all the time – intelligent, cool, brilliant women, dating boring, mediocre men who don’t deserve them.
They give up their names when they get married, they give up their careers when they have kids, they give up their lives to load the dishwasher.
And all for men who will go to the pub with their mates after work and call their wives nags.
We all tell ourselves we’re too much, but there’s barely anything left by the time we’ve been daughters and girlfriends and wives and mothers.
We erase ourselves, and they don’t even notice!
And for what purpose? To become someone we don’t even recognise.
To become someone our younger selves would’ve been horrified and embarrassed by.
I was there in 2017 for the Women’s March, and now here I am, sobbing on the floor because a man who can’t wash his own boxers just dumped me.
What is that? [strangled noise] We’re socialised to be nice, to be polite, to wear our wounds on the inside.
We’re told being angry is the one emotion that belongs to men.
And if we do show it, we’re called witches and bitches and ball-busters and aggressive and bossy and abrasive and stroppy and shrill.
AND NAGS. We quietly get on with it all, even as it piles up and up on top of us – more and more, with no end in sight.
We try and quieten any unease we feel over what has happened to our lives by sending ourselves off to fucking yoga retreats and reading The Secret or doing that detox Beyonce once tried – and why?
So we don’t end up risking upsetting the men in our lives by speaking up about our unhappiness?
So we don’t end up inconveniencing them with our existence?
Every woman I know has Imposter Syndrome, and I know why!
It’s because we’re made to feel like imposters everywhere we go!
We’re not wanted in the boardrooms or in their men’s clubs or in their spaces.
We make ourselves smaller and smaller and thinner and thinner so we don’t bother anyone with our aliveness.
We tell ourselves we’re too much; we go to bed every night wondering if we said the wrong thing in that conversation we had earlier or looked silly in the outfit we carefully selected.
[ragged breathing] You know what Frankenstein said?
Mary Shelley got it right. ‘I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.’ [sound of LC standing up] I AM FRANKENSTEINNNNNNNNNNNNNN!
Cloakroom attendant: I feel you, babe.
LC: Can you believe they don’t have any tiramisu in there?
[watch again?]