online love (billie eilish)

blank space

A/N: my goal was to somehow make this song eerie

inspo: blank space, taylor swift

~

Nice to meet you, where you been? I could show you incredible things...

Billie's POV:

"This must have been incredibly traumatic for you."

I bite my lip but it never bleeds. I learned as a kid if you hold your breath and stare up at the bright ceiling lights, it'll keep you from sneezing. I wonder if that also works for crying.

"It's not. It's not trauma. It's just my life. And I should've been more careful. I should know that with this many eyes there's gonna be lots of targets on my back. I should've just fucking hired security instead of painting my incredibly mentally ill girlfriend into some prince charming. And all those stupid stories and fairytales would never work for us, anyways," I let every depressing thought out without guilt.

"Why?"

"Because they're all about a guy and a girl. And we're two girls. There's no fairytales for two girls. There's a gay kiss in the background of a film or a side character girl who uses she/her pronouns when talking about her partner to the main character. It's all about performance. But nobody really cares. The whole world is built around a man and a woman thriving together. And even then, it's the woman doing all the behind the scenes work while the man claims all the credit. All straight people care about is not coming across as homophobic. And all gay people no matter how hard we deny it have this little part of us that wants our kind of love to be accepted by everyone we meet," I take a breath.

"Keep going," my therapist leans forward.

"Like, whenever I meet someone new, I don't know. I just want to get it over with. I want to accidentally mention the fact that I'm dating somebody that's a girl. I want to see their reaction. I want to see their disgust or their indifference or their excitement because they're also like me. And people say you don't have to come out to everybody, but there's this need to know if this person is gonna accept me for who I am, even if they're just the person taking my order or driving me down the block. I want to tell everybody and nobody. And I hate, I fucking hate, when people will try to emphasize with this feeling by comparing it to something totally fucking different. They'll be like, oh, everybody has parts of themselves they want people to accept. It's not the same thing. It's not," I stop talking, not knowing what else there is to say.

"Do you want a prince charming or do you want to be him for Freya?" she asks one of those metaphorical questions. I sigh.

"Neither. Both, I don't know," I deflect without thinking about it.

"Like, it's not like I have a savior complex or anything. She just needs help all the time. And I don't blame her for it, cause she's had this insane, traumatic life. Somehow I'm always being pushed into being her savior. And sometimes I totally get it. But other times, I feel like, ah, this feels mean to say, but... Sometimes I feel like she just doesn't want to do the work herself, so she makes me do it for her. And I do feel better when I help her. But I also want to know that if I ever break down, she's gonna save me. No. That's wrong. I know that you're gonna say that we shouldn't be breaking down and saving each other. It should be like this: If I'm in a bad mood or had a tough day, I deal with it, and be with her to make myself happy, because she makes me happy. She makes me feel better about my bad day. And vice versa. It shouldn't always be some huge traumatic breakdown and running away and chasing on a white horse and shit," I overcorrect myself and feel embarrassed.

"Why do you refer to her life as traumatic, but refuse to call what you've been through trauma?"

Oh. Didn't see that one coming, but I kinda walked right into it.