Content warning: mentions of sex-
ual assault.
Writer’s note: This is not about 
one person in particular, but a com-
pilation of memories from different 
people I have met. I wrote this piece 
to both share my experiences and 
thoughts on dating and relationships 
as well as to use this piece to finally let 
go and free myself of the heavy memo-
ries I have hidden so deep inside of me 
for so long. 
~~~
My bed feels a little emptier now 
that you left. The outline of your 
body is still pressed into the crum-
pled, untucked sheets. The smell of 
your neck and my favorite cologne 
is left behind and is only noticeable 
when I roll over onto your side and 
press my nose against your pillow, 
which I try to avoid as to not mess up 
the remnants of your outline.
I ask if I’ll see you tomorrow, but 
you don’t respond. I ask what you 
have planned for the rest of the day. 
You respond with nothing more 
than an “I’m pretty busy today.” 
It’s as if you’re just brushing me off, 
enough that I understand and don’t 
ask you to grab lunch later. As you 
leave, you peek outside to make sure 
my roommate isn’t there, so you can 
leave without a trace to ensure that 
the only people who knew about us 
were you and me. 
~~~
My fingers tingle as the tips of 
them reach your warm skin. With-

out much thought, I draw little 
hearts on your back and rub my 
thumb delicately against your soft 
lips while your eyes flutter closed. 
We lay, as vulnerable and open as we 
possibly can, on a twin bed too small 
for either of us, let alone us both. 
You hold the most fragile part of me 
broken from years of heartbreak and 
bruises as you put your arm around 
me, and yet you have no idea. No idea 
of all the pain that my arms have felt 
from being pinned down. No idea 
of the residual pain from the half-
closed seal left on my mouth from all 
the hands that pressed against my 
lips to muffle anything that came 
out. You have no idea that you are 
the first to see me and hold me after 
what happened. And I don’t know if 
you ever will. 
~~~
You looked at me. You really 
looked at me. Past the smeared mas-
cara deep into my eyes, which you 
always loved the dark color of since 
they were much darker than yours, 
and past the old dried contacts and 
the redness they have caused found 
underneath all those black layers 
of grief and worry, lies something 
open and bright. A space that no one 
has tainted yet, untouched by your 
hands or the hurt they will inevi-
tably cause. And you smile at me. A 
smile at first filled with excitement 
and admiration. A smile of comfort 
and tenderness and purity. A smile 
that quickly turns into arrogance 
and control as you reach into that 
open space of hope and innocence 
and inject it with your dark essence. 
Yet I hold them open. I don’t shut 

them closed.
I leave them open, for you. 
~~~
You asked me if I have ever 
dreamt of you. “Once,” I said. I lied 
because I didn’t have the heart to tell 
you what it was about. Even though 
you deserved to hear every painful 
detail of the effect you have left on 
me, how could I have explained to 
you as you towered above me that 
the dream was a nightmare? And a 
recurring one for that matter. How 
I’d wake up in a panic at the thought 
of you still being a daily part of my 
life, panting, out of breath, quickly 
searching for the lights so I can 
turn to my side and make sure you 
weren’t actually there. How would 
you react? Would you get mad at me, 
or just be disappointed at the real-
ization of what my dream said about 
you as a human being?
~~~
Innocence. It’s what I first thought 
when I met you. It was what I liked 
about you. Curly hair, curlier than 
mine. Sweaters and slacks and nerdy 
tennis shoes. A sweet smile and a 
comforting glance. Round eyes, big-
ger than mine. You’d listen to me talk 
for hours straight with nothing on 
your face but a look of interest mixed 
with nervousness from us being 
alone. A smile I read as affection-
ate. A touch flooded with romantic 
hesitation and awkwardness. I don’t 
know what happened. Why you sud-
denly became like everyone else, 
and then ultimately worse like your 
friends? Was it my fault? Am I the one 
who drained you of your innocence, 
or was it something bigger than me?

~~~
My roommates weren’t home, all 
four of them. It was just you and me, 
nowhere to go. You knew that. You 
knew what that meant. But I ask you, 
do you know what you left me with? 
When you left hours after seeing the 
tears form in my eyes, pretending 
you never saw them. After hearing 
my voice crack and my body shiver 
the entire time you were over. Do 
you know what happened after? The 
second, I shut the door and locked 
every lock in case you just decided 
to turn back? How I sobbed in the 
shower while I scrubbed my skin 
red? How I couldn’t wear my favor-
ite shirt for over a month? How I 
avoided anyone new for over half a 
year in fear they would be like you? 

How I would walk every day on 
campus desperately searching for 
you in hopes that my eyes wouldn’t 
land on that black jacket of yours? 
How I still almost cry when some-
one else reminds me of you and that 
day? How I can’t go even a couple of 
days without being reminded of you? 
Does what happened ever slip 
into your mind? Do you convince 
yourself nothing happened and that 
I just stopped responding? Do you 
point me out to your friends when 
you see me walking? Or do you pre-
tend I don’t exist the way I have tried 
so hard to do with you?
~~~
Is this love? Is this what finding 
love is? Meeting all these people 
who will all end in the same man-

ner. Are these the mushy feelings 
you describe as the greatest feel-
ing in the world? Must we destroy 
ourselves until there is nothing left 
but an outer shell and a puddle of 
who we once were, all in search to 
find someone who we created an 
image of in our heads? Something 
we painted them with as sweet and 
romantic and understanding: the 
perfect person to share your life 
with. We idolize them and at the 
end of the day, they are just people. 
They scar and they bruise, and you 
leave, before they get a chance to. 
They are just another memory that 
you try to escape from while sitting 
a couple of rows behind them in 
class. And if this is love, do I really 
want it?

Michigan in Color
Wednesday, February 22, 2023 — 7

is this love?

ROSHNI MOHAN
MiC Assistant Editor

Design by Roshni Mohan

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

A box of galentine thoughts

I discovered my womanhood 
through Amy Dunne’s “cool girl” 
monologue from the movie “Gone 
Girl” (arguably pretty late in life). 
The “cool girl” monologue didn’t 
tell me I was a woman as such but 
instead taught me what it means 
to be a woman. 
“She’s a Cool Girl. Cool Girl is 
hot. Cool Girl is game. Cool Girl is 
fun. Cool Girl never gets angry at 
her man. She only smiles in a cha-
grin-loving manner and then pres-
ents her mouth for fucking.” 
In many ways, this monologue 
is an implicit way of exploring 
womanhood through women’s 
internalized 
perceptions 
of 
femininity. While Amy Dunne 
addresses the “cool girl” as a man-
made caricature, it isn’t purely a 
consequence of misogynistic cli-
ches. Words like “cool girl” and 
“pick-me,” or even the phenom-
enon of not being like other girls, 
originate within female rela-
tionships. Words like “cool girl” 
intrinsically create a standard of 
womanhood because they con-
ditionalize what is “uncool” for 
women to do. The monologue 
unexpectedly sheds light on what 
most truly helped me discover 
womanhood: female friendships. 
When we imply that desirability 
is a competition, we internalize 
the idea that friendships with 
women are superficial. 
My media consumption reaf-
firmed this notion throughout 
much of my childhood and even 
my adulthood. Although the 
importance of female friendships 
has become more intuitive over 
the years, whenever I delve into 
media from the ‘90s and 2000s, 
I am reminded of the frivolous 
portrayals of female friendships. 
Regina 
George’s 
Burn 
Book 
in “Mean Girls” or the “guy’s 
girl” trope of women preferring 
“drama-free” friendships with 
men perpetuated the idea that 

befriending a woman was inher-
ently perplexing.
The quintessential “complex-
ity” of female friendships in 
media boils down to superficial 
interactions that are just another 
manifestation of misogyny. The 
mean girl friendships that rely 
on social clout and backstabbing 
behavior exist in a man-made 
fantasy land. In this fantasy land 
of “cool girls” and “uncool girls,” 
men continually visualize female 
friendships as a compilation of 
shopping sprees and pajama par-
ties. Women are thought to only 
interact with other women as a 
means to compete for the atten-
tion of men. Portrayals of female 
friendships are limited to “mind 
games” and secret social cues, 
reducing such relationships to 
just another way women become 
puzzles to men. 
Having gone to an all-girls high 
school, one would think I would 
be well-versed in female friend-
ships. However, my high school 
experience was overtaken by that 
very unfortunate need to not be 
“like other girls.” I was the social-
ly awkward brown girl freshly 
moved to LA, and I disguised the 
fact that I did not fit in by acting 
like I actively chose not to fit in. 
College redefined the importance 
of female friendships for me in 
more ways than I can count. 
While all of my friendships in 
college have taught me a myriad 
of lessons, my friend Jinan is the 
one who taught me how to actu-
alize all of those lessons. Jinan 
burst my self-important, agoniz-
ing bubble and showed me that 
the world was truly more than 
feeling sorry for myself. As a naive 
college freshman, she was my idol. 
Although just a few years older 
than me, it seemed that she was in 
control over every part of her life 
in ways I could only imagine for 
myself. I was fascinated with the 
way she did her hair, the way she 
spoke and the divine grace she 
carried herself with. In ways, I 
wanted to be her, in another sense 

I just wanted to know her. 
She became my brown girl safe 
space as I navigated various all-
white spaces. She taught me to 
never attach my worth to the way 
a white man sees me. 
“He doesn’t look at you because 
you’re brown, not because you 
aren’t beautiful.” 
I never knew how bonded my 
soul could be to someone until 
Jinan. Female friendships are the 
most intimate and soul-bearing 
human relationships. I can be 
at my most vulnerable, and the 
women in my life will lift me back 
up while celebrating me at my 
best. Every time I cry at parties, 
Jinan holds me in her arms and 
makes sure my mascara doesn’t 
run. I call her after class to tell 
her all about the dumb, ignorant 
thing someone said in a discus-
sion. We lie in bed with facemasks 
on, discussing everything from 
our disagreements on philosophy 
to anime recommendations. 
“I love being a cunt,” she says.
“So do I.”
She has healed me in ways a 
man never could. 
Jinan broke down a lot of the 
misconceptions I held about 
befriending women. Beyond the 
comfort and beauty I found in 
our friendship, she showed me 
so much about growing into my 
womanhood. Instead of “blah 
blah blah” she would say “blasé 
blasé blah” so I started blasé-ing 
my way through life as well. I 
learned how to style myself, how 
to make my presence known and 
how to love things that other 
women loved as well. 
Although Jinan helped me 
embrace my femininity through 
my bimbo-ish ways of talking, 
dressing and plainly existing, I 
am critical of the way I have been 
socialized ever since. I am often 
met with comments that place my 
interactions with certain women 
directly under the scope of male 
perception. 

SHANIA BAWEJA
MiC Assistant Editor

Love Me Not

I thought I was in love with 
a boy I met the summer before 
starting high school. My teenage 
self recognized love as insecurity 
and misunderstanding and fight-
ing the night before final exams 
because it felt so familiar to what 
I had grown up with. I was the 
manic pixie dream girl to his sad 
boy, and I tried my best to stay 
true to his idea of me. I talked him 
down many a ledge, and I resented 
him for it because I knew he would 
never be able to do the same. At 16, 
I was carrying the weight of the 
world on my shoulders. I never 
learned how to ask for help, and he 
never bothered to notice. He swore 
he loved me, but I don’t think he 
knew what that meant. I don’t 
say “I love you” as often anymore 
because too many people don’t 
know what it means. I’ve grown so 
sick of love ever since. 
The first time, I think, I was 
truly in love was when I acci-
dentally fell for my best friend. 
This kind of love wasn’t sicken-
ing, though. It was unspoken and 
honest and kind. When the voices 
in my head get too loud, she is my 
peace. She was my freshman-year 
roommate and the only person 
who would understand my inner 
turmoil the following summer. 
Because misery demands com-
pany, we were inseparable in our 
melancholia. 
Summer 
turned 
to winter, and I fell in love with 
the saddest version of us. I didn’t 
realize I was in love until I had 
extended myself too far. By no 
fault of anyone but my own, I had 
given far too much of myself to her, 
and I was left with nothing for me. 
That’s what you do when you’re 
in love with your best friend, I 
thought. I thought love traversed 
all boundaries. I learned the hard 
way that love cannot be boundless 

if I myself am not whole. I’ll always 
be in love with her, but I’ve grown 
afraid of losing myself in love since 
then.
I didn’t love myself when I 
poured love into everyone around 
me. From an early age, I was 
indoctrinated 
into 
convoluted 
ideas of love by the scars passed 
down to me from my mother, her 
mother and her mother. For all I 
knew, love was meant to hurt. So, 
I carry the wounds from my first 
and most persisting heartbreak 
in the palms of my hands. I force 
my calloused fingers together in 
prayer, begging religion to soften 
my cold and uninviting touch. But 
the closest thing I’ve come to faith 
is believing my mother when she 
told me her love was conditional. 
Afraid and languished, I desper-
ately attempt to confess my own 
declarations of love, but I don’t 
have the best precedent for them.
My four years in college have 
been the antithesis of love. Every 
drunk kiss and swipe right was 
a frantic pursuit to temporarily 
pacify my emotional and sexual 
frustration, and I never dealt with 
it well the morning after. The sun 
would glare at me in disapproval, 
and the alarm in my head would 
ring loud to remind me that the 
body lying next to me was just 
another number in a masochis-
tic game of dating app roulette. 
By noon, the hangover from the 
night’s capricious behavior would 
fade, and the sounds of my televi-
sion would drown out any last bits 
of remorse. Around midnight, I’d 
hurl out another match to ease the 
nauseating waves of desperation 
and boredom.
I’d finally replaced love with 
indifference.
My 20s feel tainted with cyni-
cism from my past experiences 
with love (or lack thereof). I’d play 
the cool girl because I could no 
longer afford to get emotionally 
invested. I resented my buckling 

knees for not standing up on their 
own, but I decided I’d never kneel 
for love. I replaced piety with apa-
thy, sacrificing myself to carnal 
temptation. But my exclusive flu-
ency in physical touch pleads like a 
dead language that no one could be 
bothered to transcribe. My body 
had so much love to give to all the 
wrong people, so I stay sickened by 
and weary of whatever it is I hope-
lessly continue to pursue. 
Months after another failed 
affair, I steal a kiss with someone 
behind a grimy bathroom stall, 
and I fear a familiar cycle of self-
destruction. The walls pulse to the 
bass of a song I catch myself sing-
ing along to, and we both stumble 
out to different sinks, laughing to 
each other in the mirror. The soft 
lighting catches her eyes, and I 
blush in colors of sapphic infatua-
tion. 
We hold our heads at coffee the 
next morning, but the hangover 
dissipates into flighty eye contact 
and toeing the line between play-
fulness and discomfort. I have 
to sit on my hands to stop myself 
from pulling her face into mine, 
worried that she’ll read the karma 
from my touch. After three short 
hours of oversharing and trauma 
bonding, we nod in agreement. 
Girls should always go to the bath-
room together.
A few nights later, I pull up 
outside her house, and my body 
starts to panic. The sudden drops 
of rain tapping on my windshield 
match my elevated heart rate. My 
breathing shallows, and I hold my 
chest unsettled by the terror that 
washes over me. I close my eyes for 
a moment and revel in an all-too-
familiar sensation interrupting 
my dogmatic slumber of tortured 
numbness. The indifference had 
suffocated me. She opens the pas-
senger door, and I let out a breath I 
didn’t know I was holding in. 

EASHETA SHAH
Former MiC Columnist

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