In Her Head

They met six months ago, in a low-lit bar downtown frequented by corporate twentysomethings. Virginia saw him approaching out of the corner of her eye and thought he looked nice enough. He was tall, wearing black pants and a dark blue button-up. While he talked to her and her three friends, she could practically feel him evaluating them, his eyes sliding over her friends’ bodies even as his relaxed smile and friendly banter put them at ease. When his gaze lazily turned to her, she resisted the urge to suck in her stomach and stood perfectly still until his eyes swept back up to her face. She raised her right eyebrow and held eye contact with him for three long seconds before he blinked, and his easygoing smile turned into something else.

“No one meets anyone in real life anymore,” she told him later that night. He just smiled and asked for her number.

On their first date, they split a bottle of wine while watching the sunset in the park. Neither one of them had thought to bring a blanket, so they sat on the damp grass even though she was wearing her favorite light wash jeans, which would certainly be stained. They talked about work, their families, where they wanted to go on their next vacation. He was even more beautiful in the sunlight, his brown eyes framed with thick lashes and his dark hair falling into his face. She felt her cheeks warm whenever he held eye contact while they spoke, so she spent most of the time looking out at the setting sun.

They went to a nearby restaurant, and he ordered drinks. He said she had caught his eye at the bar right away, that he had come over to her group of friends just to talk to her. They ordered another round. He had freckles splayed across his nose and cheeks, so faint she could only see them when their heads were close together. When he leaned forward and placed his hand on her upper thigh, his thumb drawing lazy circles across the denim, she knew they were going to have sex. She was just past tipsy, where everything was fuzzy and warm and funny.

She walked home the next day in her grass-stained jeans and texted her best friends: .

he was cute, like really cute

and the sex was really good

i think i want to see him again

He called her perfect once—one time, when they were lying together in his bed with the lights off, his finger tracing her jawline—and she’s been chasing that feeling ever since. 

She began to construct an idea of him in her mind, built from their daily text conversations and weekly dates: He was twenty-six, three years older than her. He worked in some finance job that he didn’t particularly care about, though he enjoyed the salary. He liked baseball and folk music and Star Wars (but not the new movies). When they were walking, he almost always reached down to hold her hand, like he wanted everyone to know they were together. He wasn’t like the other boys she had dated in college, boys who would never take her out on actual dates to restaurants or who would leave her texts unanswered for hours. He was mature, put together. Her first real-life adult relationship.

It was intoxicating being around him; all she ever wanted was more.

About seven weeks ago, she began to have arguments with him in her head, cursing him out for things that hadn’t even happened, for things she only thought he would say. Now she has these arguments all the time, everywhere—brushing her teeth before bed, walking in the rain on her way to yoga class, sitting at her desk staring at the blinking cursor on the computer screen. She lets the anger build in her throat until it nearly chokes her. Sometimes, when she lets herself imagine it too much at night before she goes to sleep, she starts to cry, tears sliding off her cheeks and onto her pillowcase. She wakes up the next morning with puffy eyes, feeling silly and stupid.

But the thing is, what initiates the made-up arguments are real things about him and their relationship, things that she never wants to say out loud for fear of being too naggy, too clingy—I feel like you don’t validate me when I tell you about my anxiety. I don’t like how you’re always at least ten minutes late to everything. That really pissed me off when you canceled our date a month ago to go play basketball with your friends. She imagines him rolling his eyes and saying she’s overreacting, calling her needy and unreasonable. She imagines the arguing leading to shouting and slamming doors and sobbing on her bed, alone.

She wants to be the cool girlfriend, the one who doesn’t suffocate him with her demands. So she lets him talk to the guy beside them at the bar for nearly half an hour instead of talking to her about her shit day at work. She gives him head while she’s on her period and doesn’t want to have sex.

She feels fucking crazy.

She should probably see a therapist about this, about all the screaming in her head, but the insurance at her new job doesn’t cover any of that mental health stuff. She used to go to therapy in college. The grad student would spout a series of buzzwords—confrontation, conflict resolution, self-care—and she would leave feeling slightly numb. The sensation always wore off quickly, though.

She’s listened to enough self-help podcasts to know that she needs more validation from her boyfriend, but they’ve only been officially dating for five months. She doesn’t want the real him to think she’s being needy too.

He called her perfect once—one time, when they were lying together in his bed with the lights off, his finger tracing her jawline—and she’s been chasing that feeling ever since. When she has sex with him lately, she finds herself saying, “I’ll do anything you want.” It is almost an involuntary response, a mantra that repeats itself over and over in her head. Anything you want, anything you want, anything. The scary thing is, she really would.

She thinks she loves him. Sometimes she’ll wake up in the middle of the night with her heart beating too fast, and when she looks at him sleeping—his mouth slightly open and his chest moving up and down in a slow steady rhythm—she can see herself spending the rest of her life with him. Him walking towards her in every crowded bar, his eyes skipping over every stranger to lock on to hers. Counting the freckles across his face before drifting off to sleep at night. His fingers interlaced with hers, always.

It’s a quarter past seven and she’s standing in front of her bathroom mirror doing her makeup when he texts to cancel their eight o’clock reservation. She stares at her phone with her eyeliner pen open in her hand until the screen goes black. She washes her face and gets into bed before she replies:

okay that’s fine

Staring into the darkness of her room, she imagines herself picking up her phone and calling him, imagines him answering with a confused Hello? She would call him inconsiderate for bailing on such short notice. Do you know how rude that is? I was getting ready all night. His voice on the other end would be bemused, almost incredulous. C’mon Virginia, it’s not a big deal. We go to dinner together like every week. Don’t overreact, okay? Her hands start to shake, and she grabs a pillow to wrap her arms around. Then she would say, Well it’s a big deal to me because you made a commitment—and he would interrupt her with a sigh that lodges a lump deep in her throat. Please don’t be like this right now, he would say. It’s exhausting. You’re just exhausting. When the tears spill down her face, hot and insistent, she squeezes her eyes together and tries not to think at all.

She still couldn’t feel anything but soft prickles that hit her chest every now and then, like her body was telling her she should feel pain, but her mind refused to recognize it as such.

He reschedules the date for the next night. She intends to act cold and unforgiving to make him see that she deserves to be treated like a priority. Fuck the cool girl routine.

But when she walks into the restaurant and sees him sitting in the corner, hair falling into his face as he leans his forearms on the table and looks at his phone, her resolve weakens. Their eyes meet across the dim room, and his face softens into a smile. He is beautiful. And for some reason, he wants her.

He gets up to hug her and when she smells his cologne, sharp and woodsy, she feels like she might cry. She swallows the lump in her throat and smiles up at him. He apologizes for canceling their plans the night before and says something came up with work. She nods away his excuse, still smiling.

They split two appetizers and she talks about them taking a trip down to the coast this summer. He reaches across the table to grab her hand, looking into her eyes as he leans down to press a kiss to the inside of her palm. Her chest becomes light and bubbly, like she just chugged a glass of champagne.

On the walk back to her apartment, she holds his hand and thinks about the noises he’ll make later when he comes inside her. As she opens her front door, she feels his hands on her waist as he leans down to press his lips to her throat. They start kissing on her couch, and when she reaches for the button on his jeans, he clears his throat and says, “Wait.”

As he’s breaking up with her, the world around her grows smaller and smaller.

Six months ago, she had her birth control implant removed after nearly a year of bleeding through tampons and rabid mood swings that made her google bipolar disorder late at night. At the gynecologist’s office during her appointment, she was lying down on the examination table with her head turned toward the wall while the doctor numbed her left arm. It took several minutes to take the tiny plastic rod out, and she could tell there was some kind of problem by the doctor’s voice, which had turned breathy and halting. She still couldn’t feel anything but soft prickles that hit her chest every now and then, like her body was telling her she should feel pain, but her mind refused to recognize it as such. She was turning her head to ask if everything was okay when she heard the physician’s panicked voice, “Wait, no! Don’t look—” and was met with the sight of her arm gushing blood six inches away from her eyes.

That’s how she feels right now: exposed, as if she were being violently ripped open from the inside out and didn’t even know, didn’t even feel anything but numb numb numb.

“But—” she says, halting and trailing off. “But I love you.” She almost whispers it; that’s how she tells him for the first time.

He blinks once and then barely shakes his head. A lock of hair falls across his forehead, and she has to resist the urge to reach out and push it away. His eyes meet hers, the same calculating gaze that scanned her from head to toe when they first met.

She wishes she could yell at him and say vicious hurtful things about what a terrible boyfriend he was. She wishes she could do anything right now but sit on the couch with her hands in her lap and look up at him, waiting, almost pleading.

Then he frowns slightly, his forehead creasing. She wants to slap that stupid look off his beautiful face. She curls her fingers together, tight, feeling her fingernails bite into the soft flesh of her palms.

“I’m sorry.”

At those words, finally, there is utter silence in her head.