#rejecting

but no one ever talks about how hard it is to be the one doing the rejection.

because they’re just so hopeful and their eyes are bright and they look at you like you’re everything and your job is to what? to utterly destroy that?

so you do, because what else is there to do, and there’s promises to stay friends and that it’ll all be okay and that there’s other fish in the sea and then it’s over.

and your heart, that never held any of that kind of care for them at all still feels a little heavy with what could’ve been, but you can’t cry, because you never liked them in the first place. it’d be selfish, right?

and there’ll be others, people that make them look like little kids again, that make them beam and radiate all the sunshine you didn’t allow them to hold on to.

The stalker enforces our culture’s cruelest rule, which is that women are not allowed to decide who will be in their lives. One of the reasons stalking has increased is that women of the past abided by that rule. They had less choice about going along with the wishes of a persistent pursuer. Until recent decades, situations with unwanted suitors who wouldn’t let go were more likely to end in marriage than in stalking...

If the culture taught and then allowed women to explicitly reject and to say no, or if more women took that power early in every relationship, stalking cases would decline dramatically.

“I don’t have a phone,” Loki says with a straight face. 

You blink in surprise, and assume this was his way of rejecting you. Giving him a small, polite smile, you nod your head and make your way past him to leave.  

“But…”

You stop walking and turn around at his voice.

“I’m available for dinner tonight?”