the man who really loves me
When I imagine who Harrison would eventually want to be with, I see a beautiful entrepreneur. Some Ivanka Trump type. She wears suits for fun. She might've been a model. That's all we know about her.
Antonio would eventually end up with a 5'3 nurse's aid with weight insecurities. A Bridget Jones without the sex appeal. She eats Ben and Jerry's when she cries. She frumpy and she ain't cute. But she cooks for everyone. She's eager to please.
I look at myself.
Not successful enough for Harrison. I goof off too much. I'm smart but I like to play. While other people are working I'm doing god knows what. There's a little white rabbit called My Whims and I chase it around.
Not steady enough for Antonio. Again we have the problem of My Whims. Not the type to cook meals for families or do even one thing I don't feel like doing. Not the type to bear children even if I could. Just what use does he have for me?
And we look at the man who actually loves me.
We ask him what he loves about me.
He loves that I'm goofy. And whimsical. And up for adventures. He doesn't care about my career. He likes my 172cm delicate and lean body and my freckled face. He likes it when I'm happy.
//
A thought came to me, that perhaps I torture myself against these two hypothetical women because they are the two paths that my mom said I could take.
She said between career and childbearing, I had to choose one. Otherwise I'm nothing. And she never apologized for saying that, and she never took it back.
When I fell off the horse of life, and stumbled back on my feet, after surgery, and rushed toward university applications, she acted as though this was a given. Like, ah, of course, rather than 'Wow, look at you jumping back on your feet so quickly after this life-altering event'. Of course, she seems to say, of course you're laboring toward the fruit of career now, since God deemed you unsuited for the other fig.
Is that what this Antonio thing is about? Because the woman he wants, the Dream Girl who would complete his Masterpiece of a Life (he used the word 'masterpiece') is the woman that my mom was pushing me to be. Not the overweight part (good lord, have some self respect, why don't you?) my mom would never condone me being fat -- if she could she would feed me a steady diet of boiled chicken breast and steamed broccoli -- I mean she envisioned for me the loving doting mother, the loving doting wife, the fulfills-all-obligations daughter-in-law.
And my body said no.
After I got diagnosed, I looked back in my diary. December 2024, exactly one year before the diagnosis, I wrote that if it must really be, that I must have kids, and since I have no good excuses -- no prior obligations, no plan for myself anyway, no particular desire for this life -- I might as well do the deed and then kill myself. I really said that.
So when I got diagnosed, I had the strangest reaction: I smiled calmly. My doctor was taken aback.
There's this little thought in my mind, that God loves me too much to let me go through with that awful path.
//
I feel this conflict within myself. I look at the phantom bride next to Antonio, and I don't envy her one bit. I don't want to be like her at all. I think she wants to be me. She dreams of being a former model, sporty, well-traveled across Europe and Asia, having lived on 3 continents, speaks 5 of the most economically powerful and prestigious languages, the popular girl in school, with an ex who is a more beautiful version of Christian Grey, married to a multilingual, sporty, masters-in-robotics engineering from the same uni where Einstein studied, old money Swiss man. I think she would want what I have. I feel almost certain about this because Antonio told me his ex fiancé (the Dream Girl) dumped him to go copy the IG influencers she sees, to 'travel the world'. Well I'm the real deal, babe, I'm not the IG girl, I'm what the IG girl is trying to cosplay.
I'm seeing a pattern. I had a friend who was a TV presenter and an Emirates flight attendant with a masters in theatre. She said her parents think she's an absolute failure of a human being. Because she doesn't have children.
//
Not even Antonio is that enchanted by his ex, I think. If that's what he wanted he wouldn't have been so captivated by me. Who really wants that beyond utility? It's like employers hiring people with zero gaps in their résumé. Do you really want someone who has never done anything but work and study? Is that really someone who is going to be an inspiration to the team?
It's the safe girl he wants. And he would never choose me, and I guess that makes me feel in a way that I've failed my mom, because I ain't no Ivanka Trump either.
//
Rob's friend is much closer to the Ivanka Trump type. She's the archetype of that kind of success. She's even taller than me (at my height you can be catalogue but you ain't gonna do runway and you ain't gonna shoot with Naomi Campbell) and well, Rob said that she could go after all that because she was never bogged down by the kind of lives we were living. The fever pitch ringing in our ears from the chaotic home. Her parents are investment bankers. They own mansions and shiny cars. They know Donald Trump. They're not the kind of ratchet screaming fighting assholes our parents were. She could study in peace. She could apply to jobs in silence. While we were surviving, she was reaching out on LinkedIn.
//
If I were to look at myself from the outside, I see the lead in an arthouse film, a Tumblr girl, if you will. I'm beyond the tropes familiar to the poshlost provincial folk. And I like myself so much it borders on arrogance. Look at the way I talk about those other girls with pity.
So why is it still so hard to love the One Person who loves Me?