Anca Dunavete

He still thinks this is how I was born. How terribly naïve. Sometimes I wish he’d realise that my cells didn’t just decide to stand up and learn coolness when they put me together. That was my mind, many years later, laying out a detailed plan for how to make me good, easy, and lovable.

‘You’re like a beautiful tomboy – bold and real, yet pretty and sensual,’ he says, and I know he’s fascinated by what he sees. He just doesn’t know I made it up for him to see exactly that, and nothing more. I want to tell him, but instead, I instinctively smile and keep walking.

At night, I think about how I could have stopped right there and given him all the secret access codes and passwords to the girl behind the mask. He would have been terribly confused. I laugh to myself in the quiet, sipping my tea.

‘Why are you doing this?’ he would’ve asked, wondering at my ability to switch from being my editor-in-chief to being my most primal, pure, authentic self. And I would have thought – or maybe even said – something like, ‘Why not? I’ve been enough of a coward to last me a lifetime. Let’s start again. Let’s start here.’

It was true, after all. I could have listened to my heart more. Then maybe I wouldn’t have heard it screaming later, in those long, impossible hours when I couldn’t sleep for the noise I made while others like him slept like babies.

‘What’s on your mind?’ they’d ask when they saw me wide awake. I’d think, Everything. But I’d say, Nothing. Then they’d leave me alone, and the noise would only get louder.

I like him a lot, that’s for sure. I’ve liked others before, but now I can’t think of anyone who isn’t him without laughing. I want to take him home and show him where I am when I’m not with him. Home, where they don’t get to come and see me, really see me. Home, up the spiral staircase, where I keep secrets, break the spell with my mind, and become the same girl I’ve always been.

A little insecure about how her parts don’t always match, yet proud they were stitched together with enough love to hold. But this isn’t magic for all eyes. This is precious and must be protected, even when the armour gets so heavy I can’t go on, even when its creaking gets so loud I can’t sleep. Even when men like him try to poke at it, trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not.

That same night, I also ask myself, for the first time, if he loves me or not – but I know he does. Uncertainty would only mean he doesn’t. When somebody loves you, you don’t find yourself curled up on a couch, questioning their love without laughing at the thought.

And yet, my home may not mean much to him. I’m less afraid of vandalism than I am of a lover dismissing it as just wood and pretty rugs – and not staying for dinner.

The girl wants to be loved. After all, love is what made her. Love is what holds her together. But there’s a catch: if she’s met with love and then love leaves, she risks coming apart. Her threads will tangle with theirs and start pulling, trying to follow the new love out the door, forgetting the old love at home. The one that lives on the inside.

I shudder at the thought, and know that damn fear is still here, sitting across from me, sipping its own tea.