I Hate Your Soft Little Kisses
Luli Sanchez [Pinterest]
This month had already been very rough, and my menstruation had arrived thirteen days later than expected.
It had been a full month of hormonal difficulties, and I felt as if it was never ending. So, when he tried to comfort me that particular morning with his soft little kisses on my forehead, I felt as if I wanted to explode. Was it me? Or was it his soft little kisses? Or was it just in general the useless comfort of a man, the gender who would never understand nor relate to the female struggle, that pissed me off so deeply? I almost felt violated by his soft little kisses. By his unsolicited comfort and pity.
I am almost turning thirty, and besides the misery that comes with menstruation, I am also experiencing a melancholy weirdness about exiting my 20’s. I would love to tell him that his soft little kisses were alchemizing my process of feeling miserable, but in all honesty, it made it worse. Just his presence in itself made it worse.
Circling back to adulthood and how there is a melancholy weirdness to it. Parallel to my misery and doubting my relationship, I started to overthink the fact that women can bleed for several days without dying. More or less 2–7 days, depending on how much of an irregular woman you are. It is a good thing that we are able to swallow contraceptives if we are in the mood for redirecting and minimising our womanhood, so thank God for those men who invented the pill. They really stabilised us all! Kudos to them.
Sarcasm aside, my menstruation is my serum of truth. And I have always felt this way. I have always felt as if I was reborn whenever my period had ended, that the old fragile post-period me had died, and that a new razor-edged me had risen.
It had become evening, and we had silently gone through the day. He seemed very peaceful, and so did I, but inside of me was a very violent energy, which I was ready to purge. I tried to ignore the image inside of me that had everything in common with a Tarantino movie: the blood, the chaos, the acting, and sticking to the script. I decided to sneak out for my usual menstrual treat, extra-salty French fries. I stepped into my loafers, and as I looked down, I noticed that I was wearing two different socks, one of which had a hole in it. I told myself that I didn’t give a fuck, but I very much did. I was simply too lazy and too heavy to go upstairs to put on a new matching pair, like a little kid that had been woken up to go to school on a December morning, half asleep and not remotely ready to walk through the world that I knew as blurry. I tried to grab my keys without them making that jangle sound, but unfortunately, I failed. I heard his footsteps approaching from the living room—his fucking annoying footsteps—and he then yelled from upstairs, “Baby, are you going out?”. I hate it when he calls me baby; I am not a baby, and it is fucking condescending. I felt the muscle tension around my eyes and my tears pressing against my eyelids, so I quickly dabbed my eyes to push back my tears. I was not ready to address his soft little kisses or the fact that I hate that he calls me baby. So, there I stood in my imprecise grief while he was walking down the stairs to hug me before I went on my journey down to the shawarma shop. He called me baby again and squeezed both of my shoulders, and as I thought that it could not get any worse, he turned me around and started rubbing my back. In this moment, I imagined myself violently removing his hands and yelling into his face that I hated his soft little kisses and how he calls me baby, and if this didn’t stop immediately, he and I were over. What really happened was that I let him rub my shoulders for a good two minutes, turned around and forced a smile, and then took off to go get my french fries. Extra salty.
It was a cold December evening, and I hadn’t put on a coat, but it didn’t matter because everything inside of me was oozing with hot flashes and anger. I was warm all right, and the shawarma shop wasn’t more than a 2-minute walk away. I could smell myself as I had not taken a shower for three days, and my hair had definitely seen better days, but all of that was not a priority. The French fries were a priority. As I was approaching the shawarma shop, I saw that there was no line. I didn’t know how to feel about that, as I was hoping to hang out there for a bit. To avoid the shoulder squeezes at home. I guess I could hang out for a while anyway.
As I walked in, I again forced a smile and ordered my french fries. Extra salty. The shawarma guy asked me to take a seat while waiting, so I did. I had brought my headphones in case I needed to zone out to a song and have a main character moment while waiting, undisturbed. So I put them on and pressed shuffle on a playlist that I made as a tribute to the weird melancholy that comes with adulthood. “Don’t Make Me Over” with Dionne Warwick was playing in my ears, and all of a sudden, in that shawarma shop, I could finally be honest; I could finally collapse. I was looking out the window while the tears were rolling down my cheeks. I was having all sorts of flashbacks from love and life. Of everything I had accomplished, everything that was yet to be accomplished, and everything that was never going to be accomplished. Lastly I thought about the people that I had lost, who will forever live on in my memory. I looked up at the sky and noticed a full moon, and I cursed it. I thought, god fucking damnit, on top of my menstruation there’s also a full moon tonight, and I started crying even more. I wiped the tears away from my cheeks and looked to my right. There they were, my extra-salted French fries. I cried even more because I knew that the shawarma man had seen me crying and most likely didn’t want to disturb me during my manic episode. I cried because it was the exact intimate support I had been looking for all day. An unnoticed gesture to brighten up my day. I high-key shamefully grabbed my french fries, turned around with swollen eyes, and said “bye” with a trembling voice. The shawarma guy fully ignored my presence while stuffing a pita bread with meat.
The 2-minute walk home felt like an hour, but I made it, and I walked upstairs, dreading "baby". But he had already gone to bed, the lights were off and the bedroom door was closed. I was relieved. I went into the kitchen to grab a plate for the french fries and saw a little note on the kitchen counter. I said to myself, “If this note says baby on it, I will murder him in his sleep" but it said, “I drew you a bath, enjoy your french fries, extra salty. I love you.”
Dionne was still playing in my ears, “Don’t pick on the things I say, the things I do, just love me with all my faults, the way that I love you”.
As I stepped into the bath with a french fry in my mouth, extra salty, I thought to myself; that’s my man, and I guess I could be your baby, but I still fucking hate your soft little kisses.