reading room
Not a Trophy, Not a Receipt
Who taught the corridor to rank us like league tables— as if a girl beside you adds points to your predicted grade?
Gross.
Who priced a smile in clout, turned hand-holding into a logo, stamped "exclusive" on a person like a limited-run trainer drop?
Gross.
I'm seventeen and tired of it: the whisper that a date is currency, the boys are banks, girls are gold, and status is the interest we collect.
No.
She isn't a badge to pin on a blazer, I'm not a cabinet with glass doors. We are not unlockable achievements, season-pass skins for public approval.
Love isn't a CV booster. You can't "earn" a person with grind, charm, or cheat codes. No one is a prise for finishing the level.
Stop calling them "out of your league." We're not fixtures. We're not scores. We're people with headaches, deadlines, bad jokes, soft fears, and loud laughs.
If your mates clap louder when she says yes than when she says what she wants— something's rotten in the rules.
If an app tells her she's valuable when she's chosen, posted, claimed, and silent otherwise— smash the metric, not her voice.
I refuse the trade. No auctions in my mouth, no receipts in my pocket, no trophies on my arm.
Here's my counterspell: One person, whole and happy— not a half hunting a half; or two, if chosen; or none for now— a life that nobody scores.
Monogamy, hetero, queer, poly, solo— none of them a ladder to the "good life," just routes on a map you can skip, detours I'm free not to take.
I'm often most alive when single, unclaimed, unbranded, unmeasured— time to hear my own music without the crowd yelling "pair up."
Call it radical, or just normal. Call it respect with the volume on. Call it what should have been before the marketplace moved in.
And if the crowd still chants win, win, win— I'll answer: We're not playing your game. We're writing our own— and mine doesn't require a plus-one.
Everything else? Gross.
— Lilith