Fuck, I’m so sick of these dates. How exhausting it all is. I counted this morning — 85 dates in a year and a half. Some absurdly large number. Though who cares? I don’t. Why sit at home when someone’s inviting you out and keeping you entertained?
The only problem is that almost every one of them bores me almost immediately. The same old stories, the same attempts to impress. If he’s interesting — he’s broke. If he’s wealthy — he’s vulgar and crass. And why, why do they all start looking so terrible after 35? One grows a belly, another’s lost half his hair somewhere along the way, a third has just sort of... sagged all over. All because of that worthless male chromosome...
So why do I keep going? Well, first — to have fun at their expense. I find a particular kind of pleasure in it. Most men are willing to listen to just about anything at first, as long as you’re beautiful. Second — to confirm, in fact, that I am beautiful. And third — well, what if a truck full of good material tips over on my street one day?... Oh, that’s a good one, that’s really good! I have to remember that, say it to a girlfriend sometime.
Yesterday I had another date. But something went wrong — or rather, yesterday everything went wrong.
A young guy invited me out, 26 years old. This is the kind of situation where you go knowing perfectly well nothing will come of it, and you don’t really care, so you can afford to be a little more honest, and a little less busy performing someone else. Besides, it’s pleasant — feeling that young, hungry gaze on you — being wanted. But yesterday... I don’t quite know how to describe it all, but I’ll try.
We met in the center at Chekhovskaya, and walked along Tverskoy Boulevard to the restaurant he’d invited me to. I was pleasantly surprised. The place was expensive but cozy at the same time. Perfect Instagram spot. We sat down at a table by the window. A waitress came over, we ordered, and he began asking about me, my life, my interests.
I started in, as usual. I’m a successful divorced woman, I have my own blog, I run a private practice in psychology and numerology. Yes, of course numerology is a science too, and I have an internationally recognized diploma in it. Then a little about how numbers influence people’s lives... In short, I started my usual bullshit on autopilot.
And then... I don’t know what came over me... but suddenly I felt absolutely disgusted. My throat closed up, my mouth filled with acid. One more second and I would’ve puked right onto the table, onto his hands, onto this whole pathetic date. And I went quiet.
After that... something else entirely started coming out of me. At first it was from the nausea, and then just for the hell of it, I began telling him something completely different. The truth. God, the expressions that crossed that little face of his. I found it very funny, watching this pathetic little hamster.
You know, I got married young — I was 25, and my husband was only 21. He’d just come back from the army. And I’d waited for him — he seemed like a smart catch at the time, and I desperately needed to get married. Remember I wrote to you that I have an older sister? Well, she was the real reason I wanted to get married. What a rivalry I had with her in everything. You thought it was love? Ha-ha! No, of course there was no love.
About my sister — she was already 31 by then, and still not married. And God, how badly I wanted to rub it in her face. To show everyone, my mother first of all — there’s your older daughter, and here I am. I’m 25, and I’m already married to a Muscovite — with an apartment, a residency registration, and all the privileges that come with it. It was the most important victory of my life.
The guy wasn’t particularly careful either, we didn’t use protection. So take that lack of protection, multiply it by my very female desire to get married, and of course — I got pregnant. His family knew me, I’d even lived with them for a stretch. So he had nowhere to run, and after some time we got married.
I remember feeling very strongly in my own power back then. I started carrying myself differently with people, my whole perception of things shifted. “I will do as I please, no matter what” — that’s what I told my brand new husband.
Then nine long years. With a man I dreamed of breaking. When something went wrong for him at work — I humiliated him in bed, then cried with fury that he wasn’t a real man. I wanted him to feel exactly what I wanted him to feel, and to do exactly what I thought was right. He never did submit.
So when my ex-husband left me... Oh, I remember that day very well — how he got up in the morning, threw a fit over some messages I’d exchanged with a friend, and drove off. And I just... exhaled.
I don’t know, I felt nothing — no fear, no anger — all of that came later. That day I was completely consumed by one single idea: finally, the source of all my failures and suffering had disappeared from my life. Finally, no one would stand in the way of me building my life, of moving toward the success I had been putting off for far too long. I’m not stupid anymore, and I’ll find myself a man — not such a hopeless one — someone who will appreciate me properly and listen to my advice. I was already thinking all of this literally an hour after my husband drove away. I arranged my first date within two hours of him leaving, by the way — ha-ha! That doesn’t mean anything... right?
After the divorce, I had another relationship. I was seeing two men at the same time. Well, they didn’t both appear at once, of course. But I simply couldn’t choose between them. Each one drew me in his own particular way. You understand? With one I got one set of feelings, with the other something completely different. When I needed one kind of sensation — I was with one. And for the other I would simply vanish during those moments. And vice versa. This went on for six months. You think I’m bad? Ha-ha, wait... I did eventually choose one!
And with the other, I simply disappeared — went silent — even though I still needed him. I would have gone on sitting on two chairs, but I was just tired. It took too much time, you have to prepare yourself for each one separately. And not mix up who said what. So in the moment, I went with whoever felt right. Then he bored me too. You know how it is — the same thing over and over gets dull. I’m not like everyone else — I don’t see the beauty in sameness. Arguments started, I had no intention of doing anything about it. He tried for about a month. But I didn’t want to, and in general I didn’t care. Well, in one of those arguments we broke up. He left too. I cried — it stings, after all. Then I tried to go back to the second one. He didn’t even reply — can you imagine? That really got to me. I wrote again. A second time. A third. A fourth. Stubborn as a rock, I thought. Never mind — one day you’ll write to me, and then I’ll have my revenge.
Why are you looking at me like that? You think I’m cruel...? Maybe I am. But if I’d had more time — maybe I would have done things differently. You know what I would have done? I wouldn’t have done anything at all — not until I’d learned how to love. I don’t know what that means right now. But I could have figured it out — I’m capable of it... if I had only thought about it even once, I’d have understood something by now! What am I doing going on all these dates? I think — find the perfect one, and then I’ll love him. So how many perfect ones have there been? Everything I’m telling you right now — it’s filth, and it was born from filth. I would have... I would have thought about whether I should go on living in this world at all.
I never loved anyone — not my husband, not the ones that followed. I only loved my own feeling in the moment, and myself within that feeling. My own sensation. Do you understand that? When I felt good — I was nice to them. When I didn’t — that was it, I didn’t care about anything, I was locked inside a tank. I didn’t want to hear a word, everything anyone did irritated me. Do you think other people’s feelings ever concerned me? No — because their feelings are their own responsibility. That’s what they say, isn’t it?
And you know what psychology has to say about all this? After all, I studied it for three fucking years. It says — listen carefully — my position is the most correct position of all. It’s called healthy egoism: the ability to put yourself first without feeling guilty, to say “no,” and to protect your personal boundaries.
Everything else is deviation and disorder. Codependency, self-sacrifice, repression, and so on down the list. It turns out that according to psychology, a person isn’t even allowed to fight for love anymore — that’s apparently a shameful thing to do. It means dependency. Which means pathology. Which means you need treatment...
A woman — a normal woman — who devotes herself to her child and her love for him — we consider her to be flushing her life down the toilet. For the sake of a child, a tiny miracle who needs a mother’s love so desperately, for whom the center of the entire universe is still his mother, not himself...
Well? What do you think? That’s everything I wanted to tell you...
When I suddenly finished my long confession, I immediately — urgently — needed to strangle that boy right then and there. I physically felt the need to lunge for his throat. Everything I had just told him — I had perhaps, for the first time in my life... only just now learned about myself. And there he was, knowing all of it, seeing me naked and real.
I had never been so vulnerable with anyone as I was with that boy in that moment. It seemed to me that if he had moved closer to me then, I would have covered my face and sobbed the way I had never sobbed before. And if he had accepted me like that — I would have become his wife on the spot. Even if he hadn’t asked me anywhere. I would have been his wife regardless. I would have given myself over to him entirely.
I... can’t go on like this anymore. I can’t.