Who Wants To Fill My Void?

On crushing, fantasy, & pissing my pants

The first crush I can remember having was on a boy named Nicholas in my grade 2 class. He had naturally tanned skin, the kind of tan I couldn’t even achieve after an entire summer with my best effort, and for that alone I worshipped him. He was also extremely mean to me, which was more likely why I worshipped him. 

It was early April of 2001 and I was 7 going on 8. With Spring around the corner, optimism was in the air, albeit an illusory kind as we were just five months out from 9/11 and mere weeks away from my first ever heart break. Tragedies of equal caliber.

I had recently come back from Mexico which was where my family had spent March break and I was sporting a modest tan to evidence that fact - a tan that could never rival Nicholas’ natural complexion - but one that would hopefully linger for Our First Holy Communion, which was quickly approaching.

For our part, we second graders were diligently rehearsing the songs that would be the bread and butter of the ceremony. Well not the bread, the bread would be the ceremonial bread, a.k.a. the Body of Christ, a.k.a. The Holy Eucharist which we would all be receiving for the first time; a.k.a. the supper for which we were singing. I was stoked.

For what felt like eons, I would watch my hypocrite parents consume their mid-mass snack, bitter from the injustice that they had only minutes ago confiscated the Fruit Gushers I snuck in to snack on. I resented the fact that Church would break for snack time but would exclude those of us whom snack time meant the most to. When I pled my case, it was explained to me that until I was Of Age (and therefore ready to understand the weight and significance of the sacrament of Holy Communion) I wouldn’t be served. It didn’t occur to me then, but retrospectively I probably could’ve just gotten a fake ID or simply cupped my hands confidently at the altar and no one would’ve noticed or been the wiser; though, I mean, Priests do have a scrupulous eye on children, so I dunno if I would’ve actually gotten away with it. Regardless, Cheating the System wouldn’t occur to me as an option until much later in life.

But back then, O’ how I yearned for the cracker! They refer to the Eucharist in scripture as “bread” though I could see that it clearly wasn't… I do wonder if it was real bread at some point in early church proceedings, eroded over time into the thin, bland & waxy cracker it is today due to austerity measures. (I tried to look into it, but my eyes immediately glazed over and I wound up Googling its nutritional value instead. Kind of annoying that it’s not gluten free. At least it’s low-cal!)

But that’s just what it was; what I could clearly see, even from afar that it was: a thin, bland, and waxy cracker. It looked like a shittier version of the rice crackers my perpetually dieting mother would buy, the ones I would avoid, even groan when I opened the pantry to find. But I wanted it, because it was forbidden. The forbiddenness and fantasy and mythology surrounding the eucharist were what made it appealing. And now, with it finally on the horizon, I was ecstatic.

The event would be huge. Not only would I finally be in on Club Snack Time, but it would be my First Ever Accomplishment, my first ever ceremony as a sentient being, and I knew I had to bring it. Everyone would be there: my parents, my older brother (whom had already achieved said accomplishment, whom I felt inclined to upstage), my younger sisters (for whom I needed to set an example, and more importantly, make jealous), and most importantly, my Oma: the queen of faith and religiosity, a woman who lived every bit of her life by the Law of the Lord.

I already had my dress picked out, a gorgeous white gown with scalloped edges, the most gorgeous piece I’d ever owned; a piece upon selecting was already desperately brainstorming  more opportunities to wear after the event had come and gone. My birthday, I guess? I would definitely be wearing it to my wedding; it was perfect for a wedding… but between now and then… I guess I could wear it to all of my birthdays?

With the issue of the dress dealt with, I focused on the performance. When Mrs. Camalleri would announce that it was time for rehearsal, my class would all gather cross legged on the carpet before her, preparing to impress. I chose the spot right behind Nicholas, hoping to impress him simultaneously. I cleared my throat and began to belt out “Like a Sunflower” into the ear of my Future Boyfriend, picturing myself looking irresistible in the scalloped white gown, singing like an angel next week at my First Holy Communion. My parents would swell with pride, my Oma would cry, and most importantly, Nicholas would be obsessed. I would introduce him to my family after the event, and my Oma - noting that we were already in church and in uniform - would be so taken by our young love that she would insist on ordaining us then and there, and we’d walk out of church that day as both recipients of our First Holy Communion and Newlyweds. 

That was the fantasy, or as I knew it then: The Plan.

Without knowing it, I was tapping into something that would, for the rest of my life, become a necessary part of the rubric of any event, being that an event means nothing without a Love Interest.

I know for a fact that this is the most consistent thread amongst humankind, because otherwise why would every movie ever made be staked on winning over a love interest? Even movies that seem like they’re about criminal law, Christmas, or winning a sports title are not about those things at all. They’re about love. 

I mean, yes, there are a small fraction of movies with no love interest or interest in love, but those movies are for asexuals. Less than one percent of movies have no love interest because less than one percent of humans are asexuals. These numbers are of course grounded in intuition and not research, because Lord knows if I start Googling again the only data I’ll come back with is the amount of calories in an Asexual. 

I digress.

At age seven, I was not a classically trained singer or even intuitive enough to understand the intricacies of what makes one good at singing. Wanting to exert effort to the nth degree, all I knew was volume; volume was my instinct, volume would be how I could expel my best effort, volume would manifest as skill; volume would be how I could impress Nicholas.

And so I belted out the songs louder than any other kid in the class, directly into the ear of Nicholas who eventually turned around and said, “can you be quieter? You’re really bad at singing.” 

This single-handedly broke me and all of my dreams for our First Holy Communion. I’m bad at singing? What the fuck does that mean? That’s not something you would ever say to someone you love! And so, in that moment, I had to swallow that Nicholas didn’t love me back. I didn’t yet have the wherewithal to understand - let alone navigate negging - and so I took my first ever rejection as just that and was simply flattened. In tandem with my first ever heartbreak was the first time I’d been shamed for a creative effort, the first time I’d been confronted by the reality that you can put effort into art and still be bad at it. Something I still haven’t totally swallowed.

It was then that I applied something I learned over March break in Mexico at the Rio Resort daycare program, something one can only learn at the Rio Resort in Mexico: the art of lip-synching. 

During March Break at the Rio Resort in Mexico, I performed a solo routine to “Dance and Shout” by Michael Jackson and crushed it so hard that a month later, I was still receiving fan mail (I assume… seven year olds do not have access to the onslaught of family Mail, but I figured that of the stacks of mail, surely some of it must’ve been for me).

The art of lip-synching was basically magic: if you moved your mouth along to a song, to onlookers you were more or less responsible for the vocals, range and melody of Michael Jackson (without being responsible for anything else Michael Jackson may or may not be liable for). It didn’t even matter if you knew the words or not because emphatically mouthing the word “watermelon” over and over again resulted in the same effect as if you did. 

The second Nicholas told me I was a bad singer I switched off my vocals and lip-synched through the rest of rehearsal. Even though I knew all the words to This Little Light of Mine and Like a Sunflower after weeks of passionate rehearsal, it was more fun to simply mouth watermelon over and over, and so I did - I needed to harness any fun that I could after being hollowed out and heartbroken by the Bad Singer accusations. To this day I still have not beat the Bad Singer accusations, and I await my call to trial, because, bitch - I will never plead guilty. 

In the long run, I am grateful that I was discouraged from singing early, because the only thing more undignified and less likely to pan out than a career in stand up comedy is a career as a pop star, which would be exactly what I’d be pursuing had Nicholas not turned around that day and shattered my spirit.

It breaks my heart to picture myself up on the chancel with my classmates, despondently mouthing watermelon over and over again while my classmates - who hadn’t yet seen the truth; who hadn’t yet seen the outside of the cave; who still maintained their innocence - got to so freely and joyfully express themselves.

I thought the performance would be joyful, that my first indulgence in the Eucharist would be so rewarding after all of this time and anticipation, but it tasted like nothing. It got stuck in my teeth. It was sort of a thrill but the second it was out of my teeth and in my stomach I stopped thinking about what I got that day and started thinking about what I didn’t. The event was fine but ultimately lacked real purpose. 

I realize now that that’s because if the end of the movie doesn’t end in true love’s kiss, all has been for naught. If there is no prospect of love there’s no motive for anything. Why go to a party if your crush won’t be there? Why work out? Why even brush your hair? Why try to be the best version of yourself if you have no crush at all? When you are crushed by your crush, or when you have no crush at all, the world has no colour. Kind of like the asexual flag. (I feel like they just gave them the sole purple stripe to be nice, because let’s be honest, it should just be a completely grey flag…. am I wrong???)

By grade three I was a nihilist. The experience with Nicholas rendered me a bitter and untrusting loner. I was still a daydreamer; still a burgeoning young artist in search of her medium, but now I was fearful of my peers’ judgment and ire; disenchanted by the reality that I would never be the next Britney. Consequently, my heedless creativity channeled itself through a quieter and more private art form: drawing. I would spend the duration of my lonely lunches drawing fantastical illustrations all over my desk, which I had recently discovered was the perfect canvas: each day I could draw something new, and by the end of the day, easily demolish it with my eraser. Without any friends to tattle; no one would be the wiser.

Enter Ivan, a Ukrainian transplant who showed up into our class a few weeks into September. It is kismet for the New Kid to befriend The Loner until they can catch up and graduate to a better social situation, and so it was. The week or so that we were friends felt significant to me. It was really nice to have a friend for the time that I did.

But before long, my recesses were back to being spent alone. It wasn’t just that he ended up in with the popular boys that sucked, it was the acute feeling of abandonment that let me know I had fallen in love with him.

The worst part of the slow-fade and his shifting loyalty was that Ivan began to weaponize against me things he only learned because I let him get close. He still sat next to me in class, not on his own volition but rather because it was the one he was assigned and now stuck with. 

One day, as I was completing my proudest composition yet: a Rapunzel-type situation in which a tower-bound princess descends her long hair out the window, beckoning a steed straddling prince who was instead headed in the opposite direction (perhaps a metaphor? a reflection of my internal turmoil?) Ivan looked over and smirked. Waiting until I had finished the last detail - until I mic-dropped the pencil to smile at my completed work - Ivan raised his hand to summon the teacher: “Mrs. Bada, Olivia is drawing on her desk!”

I took my eraser to the desk with great fury, erasing the entire thing as quickly as possible, but I could only do so much before Mrs. Bada arrived at my desk, saw what I was up to, and scolded me for it. For the rest of the year, I could no longer get away with desk art, Ivan had put the kibosh on it, and I wish I was self assured enough to resent him for it, but I was only heartbroken to be betrayed by my crush.

Ivan kept me just invested enough to be hurt by him. During class he would talk to me, but during recess, he would hang out with the popular boys while I wandered around alone. I missed having someone to play with at recess. 

One sunny day in late March, I was building a muddy snowman (alone) with whatever I could muster of the dwindling snow on the ground, and I had done a pretty good job considering the circumstances. I took a step back to admire my work, wiping my brow and taking off my coat - it had become a rather sweaty ordeal. Just then, Ivan and his entourage ascended onto me. Naively thinking they were drawn to my project, I turned with a proud smile to Ivan. Thinking I was about to be inducted as a formal member into his squad, I willingly engaged with what turned out to be pure antagonism.

Ivan smirked, “why are you building a snowman alone? Do you not have any friends?” 

I didn’t respond, I couldn’t figure out how to. Why was my friend asking me why I didn’t have friends?

One of his friends, a popular kid who had never so much as looked at me before, blurted out: “I heard you don’t wear a bra.” 

My face went red. Was I supposed to be wearing a bra? Were the other girls in my class already wearing bras? Horrified by the accusation, however true, I defended myself: “Of course I wear a bra, how else would I keep … them… in place…?” But before I could exonerate myself from their claims, Ivan grabbed my shirt and yanked it down, exposing to the popular boys both my blatant lie as well as my bare “breasts”. They started laughing at me. Then, they kicked down my snowman and ran off. 

I took a few years off from having a crush.

…

It wasn’t until I moved schools and had real friends that I found the confidence to have a crush again. In grade 7, I had a crush on an 8th grader named Ford who I didn’t know at all and vice versa. I just respected his blonde surfer hair, athletic prowess, and position on the student council from afar. He was respectable, kind, and beloved by teachers. My standards had improved from the likes of Nicholas and Ivan, but because Ford was so incredible, I felt inferior and had no plans to pursue or even ever let anyone know how I felt. I only admitted it to my friend Skylar because she forced me by threat and after the fact I felt like I just unwittingly confessed to a murder and so I threatened her in return to keep a vow of secrecy… or fuckin’ else (at 12, there wasn’t a lot to blackmail her with) Needless to say, nothing ever happened between Ford and I.

In high school I was hit a mile a minute by crushes. In the first month of high school I had a crush on two guys from the same band in succession. (High school guys are in BANDS? Hot!) 

First came Anthony, a red-faced blonde bassist who I knew nothing about aside from the fact that he was dating my friend Jessica. I was madly in love with him. Any time I found myself in a conversation circle with him, my face would go beet red, redder than his, and if anyone said anything remotely funny I would literally pee in my pants. Like, not just a drop of pee. I fucking wish. I would literally soak my pants and have to grab my crotch to plug the faucet, so-to-speak. Most people’s lululemons smell like piss because of their proximity to the crotch, mine smelled like piss because they spent most days of the week soaked in piss.

The pissing in my pants affliction was one that lasted all throughout high school. It was directly linked to laughing, whatever receptors or synapses told me to laugh also told me to piss. It was a worse problem at dance because I was constantly laughing with my friends and also there was less fabric for the piss to penetrate. One time I left a puddle of piss on the dance floor betwixt plies. As if my ballet teacher didn’t hate me enough. (Pissing on the floor isn’t the angriest i’ve ever made my ballet teacher, or even the most disgusted. That would be when I would wear bodysuits I found in the lost-and-found made for a 5 year old which would barely stretch over my torso to expose the entirety of underdeveloped teenage titties. I think I was single handedly responsible for at least two ballet teachers quitting their jobs.)

The worst of my pissing problem was when I had a crush on a guy named Vince in my grade 9 math class because he was legitimately funny, at that point I thought he was the funniest guy I had ever met (shout out Vince, come to an open mic) and so I would often leave math class panicked about what to do with the half cup of piss or so floating in the deepest cavity of my chair. If it was last period, I could quickly stack someone else’s chair on top of mine and shove it to the side of the room before anyone noticed (I frequently consider those poor janitors who would later encounter and have to deal with my piss) or if it wasn’t last period, I’d have to tie my sweater around my waist and then sit in the chair, sacrificing my crewneck to sop up all the piss. 

Then I’d carry on with the rest of my day, sloshing through the hallways in my soaking wet lululemons, smiling. My soaking wet pants (and consequential unremitting yeast infection) were but a token; a memory of shared hilarity with my crush. It’s honestly kind of poetic that my crushes were able to get my pussy wet even before I was virile.

This is a tangent from a tangent, but there was actually a point in time where I held myself back from trying stand-up comedy because I was worried that I would make myself laugh so much that I would piss my pants onstage. So at this time let’s just take a moment of silence to appreciate:

1. The idea that I would and could make myself piss laughing

2. The beautiful underlying confidence that this concern illustrates: not being able to pursue stand-up comedy for fear that I would be too funny (I will say so far that this has not been a problem)

3. The hypothetical image of a woman doing stand up, laughing so hard at her own jokes (already insane) to the point that she has to grab her crotch while a puddle of piss pools beneath her (criminally insane)... anyway don’t let anyone tell you I’m not alt

I digress.

The second member from the aforementioned band that I crushed on was Matthew, a guitarist so committed to the emo aesthetic that his perpetually straightened bangs were even more damaged than my overbleached hair. He would be the first crush to ever cross over from crush territory and become My Boyfriend. My first ever boyfriend! We committed to being in a relationship over Facebook Messenger (née Facebook Chat) before ever speaking in real life. I would spend all day and night texting my “boyfriend” who I was too shy to acknowledge in the hallways at school. I remember bragging about having a boyfriend to my best friend Kristen as we disembarked from the bus and entered into the school, “no you don’t get it, life literally changes when you’re in love…” and before she could finish rolling her eyes, we passed Matthew in the hallway. In synchronicity we lowered our chins, awkwardly waved at each other, and speedwalked in opposite directions. To this day I’ve never seen Kristen laugh at anything so hard.

Matthew and I slowly warmed up to hanging out in real life and with actual time together, he eroded my fantasy and replaced who I imagined him to be with who he Actually Was. 

The day before we departed for Christmas break he gifted me a black and silver Coach wristlet and we shared our first kiss and I realized I didn’t like him at all. Not only did the kiss feel wrong but I found the Coach wristlet to be unbelievably tacky and frankly telling that he didn’t know me at all.

From that moment, the butterflies in my stomach were replaced with a pit, and though we texted through Christmas break, I knew it’d all be over soon. On the first day that we returned to school, I found him on the floor, back against a locker, looking like a literal emo album cover, surrounded by our friends. One of them told me that he had just gotten news that morning that his parents were getting divorced. Not knowing his parents at all and having spent the last two weeks completely moving on from him, I couldn’t find it in me to care. I think I pretended to for about ten minutes before the first period bell rang. I broke up with him by the end of the day.

…

I’ve had a million and ten crushes since high school (and got the pissing my pants thing under control, for the record) and I’ve pursued every single one of them with varying degrees of success. A lot of my crushes I am wholesale rejected from; a lot I’m met with indifference. A lot of them are bleak but at least funny in retrospect: One time when I was blackout drunk I told a guy I barely knew that I was in love with him and then he told me he was gay and then I threw up. One time I told a girl I was in love with her and she told me that I wasn’t gay but she would make out with me anyway and then I blushed and said no thanks. One time, I had a crush on a guy who was 6 years younger than me and when he said he said he liked me back I asked him why and he said because you’re blonde and skinny. And I said so, two things anyone can be if they hate themselves enough? and he said yeah. Then he fucked me poorly and we never spoke again. 

The bulk of my crushes go more-or-less down like my “relationship” with Matthew, where I am transfixed by a fantasy that is debunked as we proceed; a fantasy I feel like I’m getting too old to be falling for. On the cusp of my thirties, fully submitting myself to a crush feels sort of juvenile. It means having the time and energy to dedicate to a fairytale. It means being vulnerable when you have more to protect and the experience to tell you otherwise. It means being willing to be pathetic.

To say that “I’ve come so far” would be a euphemism. The truth is that I feel like I know too much now to let myself be truly vulnerable. The truth is that I’m running out of indignity to spare. I hate to fulfill the archetype of my age but I'm tired and I’m jaded: how many romances can you have before you completely erode the thrill of it all? Before you begin seeing the end too clearly from the start? Sometimes I worry about overexposing my brain to the dopamine of falling in love, frying those receptors and not being able to feel it by the time I find someone eligible for matrimony and procreation.

The solution I always land on is to just revel in the crush; enjoy The Having Of a Crush instead of obsessing over how to progress it; to simulate those early days of crushing from afar without ever actually advancing it; to enjoy the feeling of yearning because so often the wanting is better than the getting, anyway. A fantasy can’t disappoint you so long as it remains a fantasy. 

Herein lies my nihilism, an evolution of the inchoate seed that Nicholas gifted me some 20 years ago. The nihilism that has sat back and patiently waited to proliferate as my attempts at love wither and wane; the nihilism that smiles at me each time that I prove its point.

Each time I smile back at it. I smile, I sigh, and - more out of habit than optimism - I crouch down and lace up my sneakers so I can Get Back Out There yet again. I’m exhausted but the checkmark on my shoe reminds me to Just Do It, and so I mobilize with whatever hope I can harness, back on the unending quest to Fill the Void so as to not leave it exposed. Because we all know that if you aren’t yearning for some hypothetical future, you’re left yearning for some falsified past; left mourning a moment you can’t ever reaccess. And when the pain of the past has nothing left to teach us, we must march on, like soldiers into the night, blindly in search of whatever will hurt us next. 

…

EPILOGUE

That’s right, I’m doing an epilogue on my Substack simply to undermine myself: I’m literally laughing after reading the last section back. Even as the writer of it, I got whiplash and felt severely underprepared by the first part of the piece going into the second. I tried - I really tried - to pad what I’m scared is a repellent sort of apathy with light-hearted, hopefully funny, slightly victim-coded childhood memories, but still had no choice but to land the plane with a fucking crash while also coming out as Romantically Ran-Through with what I originally wanted to say at the end there. 

I started writing that final portion months and months ago, when I was still ~ very obviously ~ in the thick of a breakup. I have tried so many times to consolidate what I think are interesting ideas and relatable emotions with the more optimistic mindset I’m in now, while also trying to honour and accurately portray feelings I don’t feel as strongly about anymore. I’m not sure I accomplished it, but I don’t care; I give up. Or rather, I’m done. Lol. I guess there’s no difference.

I’m sick of waiting too long to post things and then missing the boat on posting something I’m proud of just because I marinate in anxiety until whatever it is feels no longer relevant. Or until I change my mind, or evolve my worldview, or whatever. What if I end up falling in love and then can’t ever post this without offending and threatening the potential of that love? What if not posting this is the only thing holding me back from graduating past these emotions and letting that happen?

It’s hard to ever feel like you’re Done something. I feel like I’m always waiting too long for things to be perfect and missing the window of opportunity, the point in which it’s relevant to either myself or to the world. I have a fear of sharing some version of myself and then having that version of me exist in the ether perpetually even as I evolve past it. I know I need to let go of that because it’s not like I’m alone in that. Like, I bet by the time Olivia Rodrigo released Good For You she had long since healed from the gay guy she wrote it about and he had long since come out as gay.

I wonder if Olivia Rodrigo finds that exhausting, still having to perform emotions she no longer feels? At least I can stop telling my jokes when I hate them, though I do have some cringe out there, posted on a platform I can’t remove them from, taunting me with the quarterly pay cheques I traded them for. I have this Substack, the Diary in which I chronicle my cognitive decline, which causes cringe whenever I remember that it's public. I’m constantly fighting the urge to just delete the whole page, but I'm trying to satisfy that same urge by burying the cringe with new stuff that I write that is hopefully less cringe. But it’s hard when nobody sets your deadlines, no one tells you that you have to be a comedian, I have to activate cognitive dissonance so that I can go out and say insane things onstage and publish insane things online simply because when I was 23 years old I decided that my life was going to be about oversharing. I made that decision and now, almost 7 years later, I have to keep to that promise because it’s how I make my living. Sort of insane!

Anyway… thank you for coming along this journey with me, kinda jokes if you even read the epilogue, um, but yeah, if you read this blog and enjoy it that means a lot. If you share it with others and leave comments and say nice things to me about it, that means even more. It makes my day and sometimes week and sometimes month (i.e. ... Keep it fucking coming or I’ll literally stop writing and delete this whole page )

Justttttkidddddddingggg!!!!!!hahhahahahaha

Okay bye!!!

XOXO

Olivia