Blackballed

…or maybe pink
“The boys” have gone to Izu for the long weekend. I feel abandoned and annoyed.
While I understand and support their need and desire to be independent from me and their various partners, I don’t like being excluded because I lack a penis. Couldn’t they come up with a better excuse to leave me behind – a real reason – or do something I’m uninterested in so I don’t want to go?
“It’s a different dynamic when you’re not there,” Tod lamely explained, as if that was supposed to make me feel better.
“I can’t consider you one of the boys; you’re very much female to me,” Jonathan once tried to placate me. It wasn’t the compliment he intended.
Until this group of friends, I’ve always been “one of the boys” and I am most displeased to be relegated to femininity. It’s not my fault I’m a girl. It’s not my fault, I say. This gender division is unkind, unfair and completely out of step with how I think about myself.
(Plus, I have an abandonment issue and these weekends away sting a bit.)