Love Me: The Manoir

The Beginning

It wasn't until I was 18, crying in bed at 4am after a round of sex that I didn't enjoy that I began to realise that I wholly, completely valued myself in relation to my desirability. Whether men or women wanted to sleep with me. Whether people desired my time, company, or advice. I wanted to be the toy that on Christmas children would point to in the Argos catalogue. They didn't need to know anything about me other than what I knew would improve my chances at securing that validation. It had meant 18 years of picking up people who never truly knew who I was - although they all must think they have access to the corners of my soul - and at the end of the day going home and feeling incredibly alone.

As I sat in rumpled sheets, the used condom in the bin, I tried to pinpoint where exactly this had all began. I wanted to call someone, anyone who could give me a better answer than the one I was giving myself, but I knew that there was only one person who could tell me something that wasn't bullshit. One person who would tell me how it is, not sugar-coat it with phrases and theories that would eventually make me bury this feeling until it resurfaced again like an angry spot. And yet she was the person who was the most scared.

She was the person who had let it go on until it became not just a small part of life, but a way of living. She is the person who as she writes this is checking her phone compulsively to see if the guy she's slept with has replied to her message because she needs her daily dose of adrenaline from the idea that somewhere someone is thinking of her for even the briefest second. She is the person sat behind this keyboard replaying her life as she tries to bring together everywhere it possibly could have begun. She realises now there is no start or end.

He still hasn't texted her back.