Member-only story
Finally Understanding Love at Seventy
A lifelong journey
When I was three my mother told me I was not what she wanted. But later told me she loved me, in front of others, witnesses to her ‘good mothering’. She also told me my family did not like me, they were only nice to me because they were nice people. I learned I was unlovable. My grandparents and aunts tried to connect with me but I didn’t trust them any more. I withdrew where it was safe and was labelled unkind, cold, unloving. I understood this to be true of myself.
In my teens, it was greasy teenage boys telling me they loved me while fumbling against my wishes until I gave in, fearful of being called frigid, names that decry a girl’s right to say no thank you. I had not been allowed to love my body, a parental punch bag, so what did I care? My fears, having a child or getting sick. My only two concerns, from fear of parental wrath. Love was not present in anybody. I hated it.
Later, it was a red rose sent by a boyfriend and a bottle of perfume that I could not wear. Was I simply ungrateful or unable to fake, to be disingenuous? He hadn’t bothered to ask me about beauty without cruelty. I had already rejected most makeup. Rocket science perhaps. Are all women stereotypes, to be seduced and fall for perfume, to think this is love, a smell, an artifice? Is that how men saw us, this man saw me? It…
