Firehose Your Fears
So you don’t embarrass yourself in restaurants
My childhood taught me I was worthless. This is why, at the age of fourteen, when my first serious boyfriend punched me in the stomach at a fast-food counter because I couldn’t make up my mind what to order, I thought I deserved it. My friend Shep picked me up off the floor and took me to a separate table. He urged me to finish with my boyfriend. I didn’t know that being punched wasn’t normal. Maybe it was just part of being in a relationship? I genuinely didn’t know. But I thought I deserved it. Though I finished with that boyfriend on the spot (and then went to see the Buzzcocks1 with him and Shep, because we had seats next to each other) by the next day I had accepted his tearful apologies and taken him back.
Because by fourteen, I had been trained to understand I was a third-class citizen. People say second, but second really wasn’t low enough. The adults were first, my step-sisters were second, my siblings and I were at the bottom. The detritus. This was demonstrat…
