In the iPhone note where seeds become blog posts, this one is called "dating as a girl boss/independent woman". I name them crap cliche things when they come to me on cold train platforms, so that when it comes to twisting them in to sentences that sound nice, I'm left with no doubt as to what the idea was on the other side of a glass of white wine, at the end of a long day. (It usually works, except for that time the whole note said "Mental health. The Royal Wedding". To this day I have no idea...)
Looking back on it now, I hate everything about that title. I hate that dating is a contrived task, almost (when I was little I thought you'd just fancy someone and they'd fancy you and that would be that. Sorry, little Ava). I hate that as a "Girl Boss" (I also hate the saying Girl Boss unless my friend Georgie is saying it in a motivational pep talk) it's sort of expected that you're so busy hustling (hate that one too) that you're "too busy for love". Most of the power-women I know are either in long term relationships with brilliantly supportive partners or have made regular dating a part of their whole thing. I will never be a dating-blogger. It's not in me. So what do you do when you're in neither of those places? (Genuine question. Clearly I don't have the answers).
Sometimes it feels as though I have spent almost the whole of my 20s trying to make footprints in dried cement. First as a young woman producing theatre, and later as a writer. When you're trying to bang down the locked doors to what are still in so many cases wealthy men's clubs, you grown a certain shield; a persona more bolshy than you, who can carry off purple lipstick better in a 9am meeting, and force people to listen, but who also learns very quickly not to take things personally. Just to let it all slide off; water, ducks back, just keep swimming. It isn't about you, 'cause it can't be. I learned the hard way that when you let it be about you, you spend a lot of time crying and the rest of it tired. You learn to be independent, not to ask for help and not to get caught up in approval. You solve problems alone, before anyone realises there even is one, 'cause if you don't, someone else will, and when they're looking for one producer, one writer, one girl who gets it right the first time?
Well. There isn't a second time for you.
We're told it isn't enough to have our thing (I'm not saying hustle anymore, sorry). We also need our side thing, and to be a brand, networking always, fighting our hardest, doing what it takes. When do you get to stop, though? At what point do you get to chill out, look at all the things you've already done, and find someone to enjoy them with?
I'm making it sound like it wasn't fun. It has, all of it, been the absolute joy of my life. But how do you reconcile that girl; in her tiny yellow dress saying "No, actually" to giants, with the other one? The real one? The romantic? When you've lived like that for so long?
Hell, it's hard. The irony, though? I think most people would like the real one better.
Hashtags make her cringe. She's awkward when she hasn't got 5 drafts to put the words in an order that sounds nice; 5 chances to get it right. In real life, you get the first draft version, the one we're told is meant to make very little sense, and sometimes that is messy, and sometimes she gets it wrong. She hasn't pre-empted what you're going to say and already thought of an answer, like she does before meetings (alright that's a lie. She totally has, and she's usually wrong).
She'd wear yoga pants about 80% of the time, if she could. She likes murder mysteries and rubbish reality tv about cheerleading, doesn't like Sondheim even though she knows she's meant to 'cause everyone does. This girl is not cool, and she's fine with that.
She's learned to love her alone time; her 'off' time, and the result is that she doesn't need anyone else, so she will never settle. It takes her a while, this theoretical girl, to realise when someone is worth letting in; sharing those moments with.
She will fight it, 'cause that's what she's been taught to do. Not to dwell too long on the good parts, 'cause surely just around the corner there's another battle that needs winning, another opportunity to be sought before it even really materialises? It can't be this easy, can it? It can't just feel good and actually be good? I don't entirely understand it, but all my Power-Person pals are the same. When it starts to feel like someone could be someone, we run. As my favourite boy said recently "We end up with amazing brunch stories and no actual human boyfriends". It loses it's appeal.
I know I like her better, though, most of the time. I just haven't quite figured out how to tell the GirlBoss that.
There's a fear, too, unfounded as it clearly is, of losing that edge you cultivated so hard, for so long. You know you can be cold, and hard, and you don't want to, but you don't want to soften immediately either. It takes a lot to show weakness, but when you do, you do. My best friend told me recently he has never seen me cry. I thought he must be wrong, but he isn't. I've always saved that for when I was alone. It goes back to that thing I said before; nobody can know there's a problem. Pretend there isn't. Smile. Put a fur cape on, and some red lipstick. There is vulnerability in strength too, right? (No. It's the other way round).
We're aware of not wanting to be intimidating (one of my best male friends told me once "Of course you're intimidating. Have you met you? It's a good thing!") but at the same time making it clear that we won't be walked over. Less scared of getting hurt, more scared of being the one to do the hurting, 'cause you know you make no sense sometimes. When you've not had to justify the way you are to anyone else for a long time, you forget people-who-aren't-you can't see inside your mind. They don't get it. Why should they? Yet you expect them to, somehow. You forget all minds don't work the same.
I'm exhausted just typing this.
But do you know the good part of that bravado-girl all independent women become? Inevitably, you start to believe it a little bit. Put on the purple lipstick enough times and it's power will seep through your skin; you'll stand tall all the time, be as fierce, if you want to, in your yoga pants as in the tiny yellow dress. Begin to know there's a little bit of her in you. All her good bits mixed with all your good bits. The one who gets the whole package is lucky. But it'll take someone special.
I love being both. I love stomping around the world demanding that people listen, and impressing people is, I'm sorry, one of my very favourite things. I like that I'm surprising sometimes. Also, though, I love being surprised. I love when someone just tells me what to do, and takes the pressure off for a moment; tells me to shut up, that it's my turn to listen. I love being impressed.
I want a person I can take to my press nights and lay in bed watching Mindhunter with as we talk about our days. I am going to be both. I am going to have both. That is a choice. It's up to me what that means. It's up to me to figure out how.
'Cause the thing about whatever we're calling ourselves now? Power women, Girl Bosses, Hustlers, Independent women? We know we're not easy. We're elusive, and complicated, and sometimes downright difficult.
But we're usually worth it.
And as far as vulnerability goes? We'll get there.
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