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Meat sauce over baby spinach because it gives a nice chroinsch 🤌 and I hate myself too much to allow carbs. Today would’ve been my one year wedding anniversary.
——

I met a mean girl, but at first she wasn’t mean at all. She was perfectly sweet. And she had actually found me.

It was the pandemic. Everyone lived online then. I moderated a chatroom for queer women. One night, a girl named Elise messaged me and asked if she was allowed to talk to me. Before I could answer, she said that if I had any interest in a bi-curious girl stranded in rural Alabama, I should text her.

I did.

I met up with a mean girl in real life, but she was just tired. I picked cotton on my way to see her where we met at a cabin. I cried the whole way home.

I fell in love with a mean girl, though mostly she was only petty. Some nights we stayed awake until sunrise just talking. She loved to talk. Those nights were rare because she had a baby boy. We would visit each other when we could.

I moved across the country to be with a mean girl, and when I arrived she was only a little catty, and suspicious of me. We made love constantly. I lived in the middle of nowhere among stray dogs, collapsing houses, and the distant percussion of gunshots ringing through the dark. Cars screamed through late-night meetups, tires scratching at the quiet like they were trying to tear the night sky open, and somewhere in all of it, I fell in love with her differently. I fell in love with her son, too.

I lived with a mean girl, though she was only mean when I deserved it. So I tried harder. I tried to learn how to parent. I touched her constantly but rarely let her touch me back because I only wanted to please her. I cooked dinner and cleaned the house and did the laundry and earned the money. I entertained the children and kissed the bruises and was part of the village. She smelled like lavender at nighttime after I would read to him. By then, he had known me for half of his life.

I married a mean girl on June 1. By then she was mean all the time.

She came home after an argument one day with ligature marks around her neck. She went to the hospital. I don’t know why they let her out. Sometimes she scratched at the spare bedroom door while I locked myself behind it. She would scream. I worried about her waking him up. Did you know that violence that is heard but not seen is worse? A child’s imagination runs wild, and it always imagines the worst.

I left a mean girl, and her son.

Now life is easy but hollowed out. I would trade almost anything—my pride, my dignity, even a slap across the face—for one more ordinary hour of that life. To crawl into bed behind her and put my face in the crook of her neck and breathe her in like eating air. She was nice when she was sleeping.

I loved a mean girl, and now my heart lives outside my body, away from home. I wonder if we will run into each other at the supermarket. I would run to him because he is the best parts of her.

I married a mean girl.