lost property/lost love

last month, i was the victim of a crime. at 7:00am on the northbound platform of the bakerloo line at piccadilly circus, as i was taking one of my suitcases up the stairs, a man who’d just exited the tube stole my dark blue suitcase—it was over 25kgs and stationed at the foot of the stairs. in the aftermath, nearly everyone in my life found a way to blame the incident on me. first my parents, then the girl i like to call my childhood best friend, and without fail, everyone arrives at the same conclusion, “could you not just have taken an uber?” they say through gritted teeth with great conviction. as if the mistake was mine. as if it would’ve fixed anything. as if crime doesn’t occur in ubers.

there were kind people, but they were few and far between.

it was just a suitcase, but it was my stuff. it was mostly clothes and shoes, expensive ones but technically replaceable. was it a bit careless? sure. i should’ve had an eye on it. i know london. but im sick of hearing that it was my fault, i did NOT offer up my suitcase to a thief. it was my shit—my skirts, my vinyls, my coats. so many gifts in there for friends and family and yes it’s upsetting losing them. and i get that it was expensive mom, but it was my fucking shit. it was my fucking 5sos vinyl that i won in a random giveaway on instagram and went all the way to clapham to pick up. my fugly patterned skirt that i found after hours of digging through a y2k wholesale rack with friends who were being a pain about it the whole time. initially i was grateful that there wasn’t anything sentimental in there but everything i own has a story attached so i don’t know what to think now.

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during a very drunk conversation with a friend, about a week after the incident, i was telling her about how i’m a very self-assured person. that i grew up in a household where i never felt unconditional love. that i learned to like myself because i was so lonely for so many years, liking myself was the last option left. it’s not a conversation i remember much of but it revisits me anyway, on the nights that are too dark. i’ve spent a lot of time since wondering how i turned out so okay, and i kept chalking it up to my friends—and i do think i have the best friends in the world but when i told her i’d never experienced unconditional love until an emotionally destructive relationship i got into at 14, one that lasted four years, on and off, her response was to tell me that she loved me conditionally. because she respected me. and that was what made our relationship worth indulging in.

everyone is desperate to be loved. i’m not special or different. except maybe in the nature of the love i crave.

you are not unloved, i often repeat to myself, in my head, over and over, until the pain recedes.

in my experience, love is always a performance, even when it’s a performance of my most authentic self. in my experience, love is a memory we’re always trying to reconstruct. people don’t love you just as is. they want something, and that something is always something i have to perform. there is no love in simply existing together—as i am, as you are.

on the nights that are too dark, tears with no cause roll down my cheeks, and the memories of everyone who has failed me flip through my mind. i think the reason i turned out okay is because i imagined so much. i imagined that people loved me, wanted me, were curious about me. i learned to like myself because i was the only person i’d got. i couldn’t afford to hate myself in a house where everyone already hated me. i learned to live off crumbs of imagined love, mom

it was during that same drunk conversation i told her, “my capacity to take bullshit from other people is endless.” its not untrue, i haven’t had very much agency in the relationships in my life and i love the people in my life. i’m probably a bad person for it, spineless even but i love you unconditionally. i’ll take your bullshit until the end of the world.

when you yelled at me for that whole car ride, mom, did you know your birthday present was in that suitcase? it’s hard to gift someone who has everything, but for you i’d bought the silliest twilight shirt, it would’ve made you laugh so much. after having been yelled at by my dad, so desperate for a bit of tenderness or comfort, i called you, friend, and you too yelled and blamed me. but did you know your birthday present was in there as well. i’d spent a whole month trying to find the perfect combination of things. i’d spent the last of my giftcard money on those lego flowers. when you called me careless and told me how preventable it all was, did you know that i’d found some old christmas wrapping paper on moving day and spent an hour i didn’t have gift-wrapping everyone’s presents, writing little notes in the gaps between the mistletoe and the birds printed on the brown paper.

i’d do it again. but what the fuck is love good for if, when i needed it the most, you’re more interested in me fucking up than in me being robbed.

do you know that, after i talked to the police for half an hour, i got on the piccadilly line, made it to heathrow, checked in, got through security, bought myself an overpriced coffee, and sat at my gate and cried. thirty straight minutes, repeating to myself that it wasn’t my fault. sitting alone, consoling myself, because everyone i loved had failed to do it for me.

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“you are not unloved,” i said to myself again, between sips of brown sugar shaken oat, although in that moment i felt so completely and utterly unloved. i wasn’t crying because of the suitcase, i was crying because i was scared. scared of my mother’s wrath that awaited me when i landed. scared of my sister’s disappointment at me losing our matching kpop demon hunters pjs. scared that this one incident would define me forever. that i’d never have any agency over my life. i was right to be scared. in the month since, it’s only been used in arguments against me about four hundred times. and i already knew then and there, exactly why i’d be the one absorbing it.

i’m an eldest daughter, i’m an older sister, i know what the rules are. always be the bigger person. swallow up others’ incompetence. never let your grievances be known. be the good kid. stop saying good kid, mom, you just mean the obedient kid.

it’s what you all want every single fucking time. me to be who you want. the weight of your love hangs heavy in my heart. so heavy i cannot leave.