Fuck That Bitch
I’ve heard those phrases and many like them for years, as have you…if you’re a woman, that is.
Men, i’m sure hear it, too. When a women rejects them or breaks up with them or… i dunno. I don’t want to think of more examples. I want to say what i need to say here which isn’t centered around the male experience.
“Fuck that bitch”
That’s something that was said to me tonight. It was said out of love. Another woman isn’t very nice to me at work and no, we were never friends and no, we don’t even really work together in the truest sense of the word. We share a space, have almost nothing in common, i don’t need her approval in order to be popular, liked, “inside of the clique” no, really. Truly. There is no need for this. Any of this.
There’s another girl, too. And i can’t speak to her relationship with me in the case that she finds and reads this which is doubtful. Either way. There is a commonality that these women share. Neither of them are cruel to me, not caddy or mean, they don’t talk about me behind closed doors or through text. They aren’t connected to each other in any way, but this commonality is one that is shared by so many people that just exist around me. Power.
I don’t want a solution for what i’m about to say, or have said, or what you think this is. I don’t think there is one, honestly. If there is, i have very little control over any of it, but let me do my best to explain before speaking more to it.
God, there are so many angles to take here. So many roads and waves and streams. I’m already tired from simply existing today so I will just breathe and put something down.
Like many of us, unfortunately, we have been mistreated. It doesn’t matter if I was abused more, if the cruelty i experienced was more common or terrible. It also, honestly, doesn’t matter if you have lived a charmed life. One where you have had a sense of stability. That’s a tough one to explain. Stability. Stability is impossible because things are constantly changing but…
But
That’s not what i mean in this case. Either way. To those of us who have been so badly wounded. Scratched, slammed, silenced… that it comes with a price that you have to pay no matter what type of currency you have or are willing to give up. It’s just ‘there’ and honestly, some of them are quite useful. Here is where I will start to get into it.
I have an ability to sense the tiniest of changes within another person. Some of you will say “omg me too” and without ego, or the need to ‘win’ i can tell you, swear to you, without even being infront of you that….
That this ability, curse, and gift can be all of those things and/or nothing at all.
I feel everything so deeply within me. It’s just what it is. I mean, there is only so much digging a girl can do before she says ‘that’s it, i get it, i’m healed’
In this case, lately, things have just ‘come to me’ and in this case it was a very simple phrase.
Fuck That Bitch.
One of those women were slightly cold to me today. I don’t even have an example to relay here. That’s how miniscule the behavior/inflection was. To the point where there aren’t words and more unrealistic than anything else. I swear to you, though. It was there. There were several things, moments or just raises of eyebrows for a second when we caught one another’s gaze during a moment of silence at work.
Today, she hurt my feelings. For no other reason that she was nice to someone else. I’m sure some of you understand that rather well. Simple concept, someone is mean to you but nice to another person right in front of you and you’re hurt. Maybe not. I don’t know but it is a reality that exists enough for me to be certain I’m not alone.
This has happened thousands and thousands of times throughout my life and every single time, without fail, i feel deeply. Gutteral. Anger. Devastation…
And then
More often than not.
I am wrong.
Because that person who hated me and i hated right back, is nice to me. smiles at me, asks me for a pen. Asked me a question or reciprocated something. I’d be lying if i said that there is a great deal of sucking up that comes with the territory of this pain. It comes from childhood. Sliding apology letters under edeles door in the middle of the night. Apologizing for … anything. Begging her to hug me. I just wanted her to speak to me again. (She used to ignore me for weeks at a time) Sometimes the note would work, other times, it wouldn’t. There is a rather large possibility that the behavior that i have developed stems from that desperation. Within that, as a little girl, not once did i say “You know what? Fuck that bitch!’ if she doesn’t like me, that’s her problem.” Maybe as i got older, sure. I have those moments but i will say that those moments are few and far between.
This Power i mentioned earlier belongs to everyone. You, the stranger that you saw in a picture on instagram today, your friend, third grade teacher.
Do this for me. Close your eyes just for a moment and let anyone pop into your head. Try to let that person be someone unimportant. I want you to close your eyes just a millisecond longer than a blink.
That person has the power too. The power to shrink me, ruin me for no other reason than they exist around me… they can hurt my feelings.
THEY CAN HURT ALL OF MY FEELINGS.
EVERY.
SINGLE.
ONE OF THEM.
What
In the holy fuck
Am i talking about?
Believe me, as much as you want for me to just get to the fucking point already, i do, too.
The power to hurt me as soon as they enter my stratosphere. Before they even know my name… there can be an action so unimportant, it barely exists and suddenly, i am so fucking sad that i become enraged.
(and do you know what is even more insane? the moment that either one of these women is even a little nice to me, acknowledges my presence in any way, they go back to being meaningless once again.)
But for now
Fuck. That. Bitch.
and…
the more i know them or interface with them, the greater power they have to absolutely tear my world apart without even knowing it… it’s astounding.
Yes, you’ve had those moments too where a loved one has listened to you vent about another person being an asshole and the loved one says things like “They’re probably just stressed. This has nothing to do with you.” or my favorite “if they were upset with you, they would tell you. If they don’t tell you than it’s their problem, not yours”
Laughable because
It is always my problem
And it hurts.
FUCK it hurts so bad.
this pain is…
Unstable
And so yes, i sit at my desk and while an almost stranger barely said good morning to me, she is, five minutes later, engaging in another conversation with another person so lively, with so much joy that it gives me pause, pain, and the truest sense of longing that I have to throw a blanket of anger over it … over myself… in order to get back to work, bring myself out of that moment, not to cry… and i say to myself
Fuck that bitch.
Along with a string of other excuses and truly realistic facts that do, indeed justify the unimportance of her in my life.
But I can’t because at that moment, she isn’t an almost stranger.
She is all that matters to me.
Because why am I not good enough to love? Why aren’t you showing me those pictures? Or even worse, why did you say “good morning” to me in stead of “good morning!” (yes, there’s a difference)
She has so much fucking power.
my god.
Someone who’s name I wont remember in a week. In being kind to someone else. My witnessing that kindness because she was … neutral… with me. She didn’t do anything. Let me clearly state that. She wasn’t cold or mean or nasty… there was no obvious inflection… but the air got stale for a moment when we caught eachother’s gaze. I don’t know what that means, but it felt right to type it out.
Bottom line.
She did nothing to me. I felt something though. Something that she did that hurt me deeply. She doesn’t even know she did it.
Irrespective of factual reality, I am feeling a great deal of pain in the absence of something that was completely unimportant to me yesterday, the day prior or even when i was walking into the office.
Suddenly, this woman is my world for no other reason than a slightly raised eyebrow and the way she is showing another person photos of her niece on her phone.
Am i making any sense?? Truly I have no idea if any of this makes sense in any way.
but…
I don’t want to rearrange this or even attempt to give this any more effor than i have. I’m exhausted because today had a lot to it.
…Work, money problems, the internet went down for a moment, i forgot ‘post its’ at home, my coffee spilled in my car AND…
and…
I didn’t get to see pictures of a stranger’s niece…
And so we flip the coin and you say to me.
“Fuck that bitch.”
In this instance, it’s from a different lens though..
I’m venting or being real with someone who might care. What is wild is that the person who I am venting to. The one who i am on the phone with, venting to, means more to me than anyone else in the whole world.
And…But… even THEY, in that moment don’t have the power to make you feel better about an almost stranger who didn’t even really do anything to you at all.
Fuck that bitch… when you say that to me for whatever reason.
Different people might say it to me…maybe…
To provide comfort
As the start of a sentence that they are going to escalate because they care so much that you honestly want me to feel better… you’re doing and saying what you can. Maybe because you haven’t been through that specific and very nuanced pain before. You try your best.
Or
Maybe you’re saying it to me so you can finish eating your lunch. “Fuck That Bitch” is an easy thing to say in order to write someone off.
But i’m realizing now that either way… in the same circumstance:
Whether I am saying it to myself for comfort, out of pain, to gain a sense of security, or to soothe myself.
Or
If YOU are saying it to ME because if you were in my shoes, you literally wouldn’t give a damn. You wouldn’t even notice at all. Because, you never needed to notice small things so you could hide.
AND NO
I am not talking about “Not caring about what others think of you”
Those are two completely separate things because truthfully, i swear that I don’t give a fucking fuck about what people think of me.
What pains me, though, are moments where i am forced to say ‘fuck that bitch’ just to get through the next moment. To survive through it. or to get me through existing until i am seen in any way by this person, this stranger, that meant nothing to me yesterday, and even less to me tomorrow but for now she is suddenly my whole entire world with all of my power.
And I won’t get it back until I see pictures of her stupid fucking niece.
But right now …that phrase… no matter which one of us is saying it.
If it’s you saying it to me to make me feel better,
or if I am saying it to myself so I don’t cry…
I feel deep desperation and pain that won’t go away until I no longer have an excuse to say