the problem of like

i wrote this in the marks and spencers changing room i worked in in the summer of 2005

The problem of like

I think about you but fear this thought. I think so hard on how I want you to like me and that maybe if I read the books I know you read then you will know that I like you. And despite this weakness I revolt from thinking of liking. For liking in the past leads to hating and crying. Liking leads to someone lying beside me in my bed and them leaving us both empty, and I return to tears. So I say o to liking people anymore, for if I don’t like then I won’t have to find out that they don’t like and then I am equal. So I claim pride and independence and that not being by myself is pointless. Then you turn up and land in my head, and I become a blur reading books you like in the hope you’ll like me too.
I think of people who have hurt me because I liked and that I can’t bear for you to turn into one of those because I like you too much to risk you turning into an object of the opposite. I don’t want you to change. When I think of how the last spat of liking ended, it seems easiest to just avoid what may be inevitable. But the liking in my head sings possibly maybe. I think of the boys and girls past and realise I don’t want you to fuck me around. And I realise I don’t want to fuck you around. And I realise therein lies the problem.