ursula, maleficent, and me

*cue evil laughter*

Last week I got an Instagram DM from my ex. It was actually a series of DMs, four, a foreboding quartet of anxiety and confusion and curiosity as to what the hell this person could want from me. We aren’t on bad terms, but we haven’t spoken in at least two and a half years. I opened and closed the app repeatedly, debating whether or not I would read them at all.

Eventually, I swallowed the panic (whole) and read the messages. She greeted me by my old name, the name of the girl that she knew and not the woman that she doesn’t. Normally that would frustrate me, but it didn’t this time. The second message read: i’m wondering if we can hop on the phone today if possible.

Odd.

Then: i’m looking for clarity around a situation and i’m not sure if you even remember but i know my trauma has me forgetting and i wanna make sure i’m not remembering the wrong thing.

Anything can be trauma in the right light, I thought. (Skeptical, dubious, afraid.)

Finally: completely understand if you’re not in the space to have deep conversations, especially after it being this long, but would appreciate if you can make space for it sometime soon x

I did the dance of putting my phone down, picking it up, putting it down again, shoving it in the glove compartment as if that would disappear them. I dug through the loam of my mind, down to the thick mud of the past for ideas, answers, an inkling of what this trauma could be. Was it a trauma that we’d experienced together? Our relationship had been studded with poverty and privation: hungry days, sketchy characters, homelessness. Maybe she was reflecting on a personal torment and wanted to dip into my memory bank to supplement her own; we used complete each other’s stories that way. Or, OR, perhaps she was reflecting on the trauma that she’d caused me — the cheating, the malefic snark of post-breakup conversations.

Emerging from the depths of yesteryear, fingernails caked with unease and half-memories, I retrieved my phone from its hiding place and replied: sorry to hear that. i hope you’re feeling held irl as you’re working through whatever it is. i can make time on monday if that works for you.

When I hung up the phone on Tuesday morning (scheduling conflicts, you know), I stared up at the cherry tree in my yard as my tear ducts swelled. In all my deep digging, my wildest remembrances, I hadn’t considered that she would want to talk about trauma that I had caused.

When I was a child, I often wondered why the villains in Disney films behaved the way they did. Why was Ursula so mean? What’s the real reason behind Maleficent’s beef with Aurora? Surely Lady Tremain had some redeeming qualities for Cinderella’s father to have married her? Modern films have successfully humanized many of the characters that we grew up hating. And while the prequels don’t erase the harm and grotty deeds for which they’re known, it does beg the thought — is it fair to boil them down to the hurt that they caused? A villain is just someone who opposes the hero’s mission, whatever that may be. That implies that the hero is just in all that she does, and if the hero is a human, well, that’s just not possible.

My ex is a villain in my story. I am a villain in hers.

On Tuesday morning, I listened as she warped my heroic deeds into wrongdoings, my personal quests for justice into pilgrimages for revenge. The stories were vaguely familiar, but seen through lenses of a different prescription — incredibly blurry from my end, but pellucid through her eyes. I gnawed on my tongue, muted my phone, physically restrained the buts and ands from leaping ayont my throat while she spoke. She painted the events that had ultimately led to our breakup in new colors, and by the end of our conversation, I apologized. Maybe more importantly, I meant it.

(I don’t deserve a medal for that, and I cringe even writing about it, but I think it’s necessary to understand the point that I’m trying to make.)

The apology was overdue, but had it come earlier it would not have been sincere. It would not have been sincere because in the blizzard of my rage, my despair, my loss, I genuinely never considered that I had done anything warranting an apology.

Nothing is all-encompassing, and I hesitate to say this for fear that the vociferous fringe use my words to justify their blatant misogyny and misdeeds, but I think that women are bad at apologizing.

More accurately, I find that we (women) are great at apologizing for the wrong things. We apologize for trivial, nonsensical things, like not Venmoing each other quickly enough after dinner, or for not texting back until the next day. We apologize for having stretch marks, for snorting when we laugh, for existing, but in my experience, we are hesitant to apologize for the emotional turmoil that we cause other people. We are socialized to apologize for everything and nothing at all. The damsel in distress trope is convenient when it needs to be, and I must admit that I’ve fallen back on it when my feelings were too labyrinthian to navigate.

Personally, admitting wrongdoing and apologizing to anyone feels like scooping out both of my eyeballs with a hot spoon (simultaneously). I don’t mean apologizing for bumping shoulders with a stranger, but reflecting upon my actions? Taking accountability for the ways that I hurt you? Yeah, give me the spoons.

When you are taught to grovel for being alive, apologizing for anything else feels like a punishment. “I’m sorry” chains us to the hackneyed softness of womanhood, and I don’t blame anyone for opting out via the few loopholes that exist. My mother owes me many an apology that I don’t expect to ever receive, and I’m sure she abandoned the hope of beg-pardons from her mother long ago.

I come from a lineage of covert villains. It’s okay to say that.

The patriarchy will always have its hand in unwelcome places, and surely its at fault for our apologetic socialization, but in 2024, this is not a feminine versus masculine issue; it is a human vs human one. I’ve been a menace to my current and former friends, to my grandfather, to the barista who was probably just having an off day, to my brother, and the woman who nabbed the last carton of sugar bomb tomatoes at New Seasons. To my ex-boss that I left high and dry by quitting in the middle of a big project and to my neighbor who wants to go to bed at 8pm. I am a villain of the spiders in my bedroom and online customer service and the planet and my sister and my dog who just needs to go on another walk, please. Justification for my actions is not hard to find, but accountability for the trouble they cause can be elusive. Lately I’m putting in a little effort to hunt it down.

In November of last year, I fired my therapist because she refused to hold me accountable for anything at all. She would refute all of my desired areas of improvement with “you’re doing the best you can,” and “other people’s feelings aren’t your responsibility.” Neither one of those things sat right with me, and honestly, neither one of those things feel true. I can’t help but wonder if everyone’s therapist is telling them the same thing. Where does that leave us?