How to not be a girlfriend.

A couple of days ago I was on the train back home. Non surprisingly this was not a pleasant experience for me, but well this goes for most experiences when I’m concerned. At first I suspected the horror would be limited to the train being packed with soldiers going home. However, this was not the case. The source of my 4 hour long torment could be tracked down to one single person. The 1 girl in front of me chatting to the guy who happened to have taken the seat next to her. In my head, for hours, I struggled for words to express my frustration. I did not want to believe the flow of bullshit coming from her mouth. I do not think it was because she was particularly attracted to the particular guy.

But she was cis girl and he was a cis guy and that’s all that mattered really. She had switched to “cool girl/perfect girlfriend” mode within seconds. I threw up a little inside of me. The conversation she initiated went like “oh you like pizza? I like pizza too!” (its fuckin pizza you have to be an alien to not like it!) , “food is good!” (like we don’t know that!) , “there is movies on tv and you like movies I like movies too!” (yeah even my neighbor watches movies ranging from shit to shit cos well people watch movies!) , “I love art!” (OK stunning you know Picasso is a painter!).  Long intervals to listen to his stories and gasp for air exclaiming “really?”, “omg”, “what did you do?” “wow” and so forth.

If you are reading this please do yourself a favour. Please fight this, don’t switch to “ideal match/cool girl/ perfect girlfriend”. If you have any tiny bit of self dignity, any crumbs of brain, any left overs of personality. Do not go there. Because, even though you have been trained to do just that, you don’t really have to do that. You do not have to talk to the under 40 guy next to you, there is no obligation. You don’t have to smile if you don’t feel like it. You can brood. You can talk about things that are actually interesting, if you want to talk, and if you have anything interesting to say (-if you don’t it’s best if you zip it especially in public places, there are people, you know...). You do not have to like everything he likes, support everything he does, and pretend he is god. Chances are he is not, you don’t like anything he likes and don’t give a shit what he does. And you know it. Faking it is horrible in sex and elsewhere. Don’t fake it. Breathe. If he doesn’t seem too keen on what you like, for heaven’s sake don’t pretend you don’t actually like it either! Just live with it! Don’t force people to touch you so you can be cute to them and giggle, just because they are cis male. You don’t have to! Maybe they will think you are lame, annoying, boring, a bitch, whatever they will think. If you are an actual you, it should not matter to you. Don’t promise to cook for them and tent to their every need. You only just met them, and besides you are not their mother, not a doormat, not a maid, not a gum on their shoe, hopefully you are a person! So you know next time you find yourself next to a human you like or don’t like or maybe don’t care about, try to remember you are not a preprogrammed “girlfriend” you are a “girl”. Plain. Just that. You don’t owe anyone shit and maybe hopefully you don’t give a shit. You are allowed to be intelligent, to be fat, to be non-cute, to have opinions on things, to be bored, to be tired, to be non amusing, to be amusing, to know things, to be ignorant, whatever you wanna be. Just to actually be.