WHATEVER IT'S 2009

The morning after you cheated on her, she woke up early. She looked at the space in the bed next to her, expecting to see you curled up like a quiet question mark, but you weren’t there. So she assumed you had gone out to get groceries instead, like you sometimes do, for coffee creamer or bagels or that frozen yogurt flavor you knew she liked so much.

The morning after you cheated on her, she checked her email. Ordered a few new plates for the kitchen cupboard, went on a run. She showered and smiled as the water left droplets against the pale skin of her arm, remembering how the dew on the bouquet of roses you once brought her formed that same pattern.

The morning after you cheated on her, she was thinking of you. Out of all the things she could be thinking of at any given moment - her parents, grad school, what to make for dinner, the number of trees in New York City - she was thinking of you. And when the girl you’d slept with texted her to say she was sorry, she didn’t know you had been dating her, she’d had no idea she had just helped you cheat, she was thinking of you too.

The morning after you cheated on her, she got dressed again, but this time in pajamas. She went back to bed. She tried not to think of you; she tried to think about how to forgive you. She thought about opening the door to you when you came back, to pretend that everything was normal. She thought about making that lasagna you liked so much for dinner. The one with ricotta and sun-dried tomatoes. The one you ate the day you moved in together.

The morning after you cheated on her, she threw her phone across the room. She thought about the difference between spite and anger. She looked at herself in the mirror and wondered if it was that bit of cellulite on her legs that had done it. Or that mole on her left cheek. Or maybe her eyebrows were too thick, or her eyes were too close together.

But then, after a while, on the morning after you cheated on her, she decided it was you that had done it. And even though it was hard, she deleted your number. Put your things on the back porch. Threw away the lasagna ingredients. Made the bed. Left a note on the door that asked you to kindly never come back again.

The Accidental Wes Anderson sub reddit is kind of amazing. Just a few: 

Abandoned Hotel Belvédère in Furka pass, Switzerland

Stadt-Bad Gotha in Gotha, Germany 

Metro train in Brussels

Anselm Kiefer

“This particular project is about my father, but it’s also about so many other people’s fathers. There are so many people who were involved in the Panthers,” she says. “So many people have a file like this on them, many of whom are still in prison, or many of whom might not have a child who happens to be an artist and can use their family as a way to talk about the greater black community and American history.”

source

That whole exhibit is fucking amazing. It should be seen by everyone.

It’s been documented time and again by psychologists and counsellors who work with assault survivors: in reaction to trauma, many women will do things they later regret because they felt somehow compelled to “be nice.” It’s a bit of social conditioning – be deferential, fix problems, avoid conflict at all costs – that keeps women uniquely vulnerable as they recriminate themselves for things that aren’t their fault. Even though no one but rapists are to blame for rape, many women carry their pacifist conditioning over into the aftermath of sexual assault, especially when they know the attacker: Maybe I’m overreacting? Maybe I misinterpreted? Maybe it was me?