What's the Craic with Eithne Mac: Volume 3

On being sick, fancying Adam Driver, and internalised victim blaming

Being sick in bed for several days has taught me two things. I am obsessed with negative self-talk (old news) and I am obsessed with Adam Driver (new news).

I hate being sick. I am an impatient patient. The past few years have seen me plagued with chronic sinus issues. Being reduced to an idle human caterpillar with respiratory issues and facial pain inevitably results in me questioning all of my life choices, until I ultimately decide that I have and am continuing to waste my life.

This most recent sinus plight was no different.

The one up side to this iteration of rotting in my small double bed for four and a half consecutive days, however, was getting the opportunity to binge an ungodly amount of Girls. (The HBO series, you pervert.)

I honestly don’t know how I’ve gotten to this point without seeing it before. The writing. The performances. The Lena Dunham. It’s all so up my street. I feel like I have so much to say about this show, but I still have a handful of episodes left, so I’ll allow myself to cross its finish line before I gush.

What I will say though is that I now have a hair-twiddling, feet-kicking crush on Adam Driver.

I can’t help but feel slightly concerned by the fact. Nothing against the man himself. He’s got the tall, dark, and handsome in a kind of strange way thing going on.

Rather, it’s concerning that my crush is a product of watching him in Girls.

For years, my friends Joanna and Jack have ranked him very highly on their hottest celebrity list, a position I could never get on board with. (Yes, we are in our 30s and spend time carefully deliberating such matters.)

As I took out my phone at 1am to alert Jack to the news that I finally understand it, I was confronted with the question of whether it’s Adam Driver’s astoundingly alive performance as Adam Sackler in the show, or the terrifying instability and intensity of the latter that won me over.

This is a pattern for me, developing crushes on the dirt baggiest of men in tv shows.

Why? Why do I fancy Mr Big? Donald Draper? Tony Soprano? Yes, ladies. Even Tony.

I had a childhood crush on Snape. While we can all agree that Alan Rickman (RIP) could get it, I don’t think a nine year old should be into a villainous school professor in billowing black robes with the neglected hairstyle of a middle aged woman just trying to keep it all together.

As a child, I stood unwaveringly firm in my supposed burning desire for Professor S. Snape. Now, I maintain I was committing to the admittedly questionable bit simply to be different. When everyone else was busy conducting compatibility tests based on some made-up relationships between the letters of their names and those of age appropriate cast members, I was casting spells to ensnare the heart of my one true Severlasting love. (A play on the name Severus, which I am potentially ruining by acknowledging because I don’t have self restraint.)

It may come as no surprise that I was a strange child, so my attention-seeking, old-man-loving efforts to go against my peers may explain the Snape thing. But I wonder if this enchantment may have signalled more than just an Aquarius, youngest of nine siblings desperately trying to differentiate themselves, instead, marking the beginning of a romantic fascination with the villain?

I spent the ages of 20 - 27 with a textbook, ticking all the boxes, terrifying example of someone with full blown Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

I do not mean to suggest that I (or anyone who gets tangled up in the deceitful web of a narcissist) am responsible for drawing him on myself. Narcissists prey on open-hearted, trusting people with emotional depth. And while it’s easy to feel like a fool for being gaslit and manipulated to such extremes, it does not make you one, no matter what your abuser, or some lingering societal narratives, may tell you. It makes you authentically human. A good one, at that. One with empathy, strength, and an abundance of love to give.

I whole-heartedly disagree with victim-blaming rhetoric. And yet, it’s a line of thinking I still can’t fully shake in applying to myself – playing out right here.

Of course I logically understand that none of his vile behaviour towards me was my fault. But that voice — his voice — still lingers, telling me I’m too naïve, too stupid, too child-like. That I am somehow to blame for it all. That I’m incapable. And that I certainly shouldn’t be trusted to make any decisions for myself.

Getting out of abusive relationships can be almost impossibly difficult, which is why it particularly stings like someone jamming a metal rod deep under your skin when “I’d never let someone treat me like that — I’d be gone” is remarked. It’s never as simple as it seems from the outside. And it’s much more complex than “letting” someone abuse you, an inherently victim-blaming stance to take on abuse, whether intended or not.

But once you have remarkably managed to pry yourself out of the claws of the person who has been controlling your every move and thought, you’re left trying to find a path out from the darkness of rock bottom.

How are you supposed to trust the world when you’ve lived in one where the person who claims to love you is destroying your concept of reality? How are you supposed to trust yourself when you’ve loved someone you made you hate yourself? How are you supposed to lean into life ever again, to experience joy without threat, as you await the enormous crash of consequence that inevitably swings back your way in the cycle of abuse?

For me, coming out the other side of my experience has taught me that I can survive anything. If living with an open heart means getting hurt again — in any aspect of life — I can live with that. But I can’t live with letting my abuser continue to control me by growing cynical, disengaged, and despondent. In living from a place of fear, I am still living a life with him in it. In learning to really feel my own feelings and think my own thoughts again, I am free. A practice I am still working on.

So, getting back to Adam Driver into me. (Sorry.) Whether my attraction is founded on an actor’s ability to be so remarkably free on camera or a character’s concerning behavioural pitfalls, one thing is for certain. Before watching Girls, I did not have a thing for Adam Driver. Now, I know that he is married to his long-time partner with whom he shares two children.

Maturing is Googling your celebrity crush’s spousal status to see if it’s worth setting down the path of your imaginary life together or not.

It’s also slowly learning to accept yourself, not despite or because of, but simply with all the scars you have and will continue to acquire.

It doesn’t matter why I now fancy Adam Driver. Anyway, I feel it’s pretty normal to develop an interest in flawed characters on screen. It is fiction, after all. I mean, I fancy Tony Soprano, but would definitely draw the line at dating a murderous mob boss in real life. (Not even just for the story, girls!) I think it comes down to having an open, curious nature with empathy, rather than being “the type of woman who goes for the wrong guy”. Regardless, I trust myself.

Negative self-talk and self-blame are echoes of the voice of my abuser. Recognising that I am now the one in control is the noise suppressant to his painful drawl.

When I look at all the beautiful relationships I am so fortunate to have in my life that are rooted in respect, kindness, and a very pure kind of love, I am reminded of my real truth. It’s not my narrative of negative self-talk, misogynistic notions of having drawn a situation on myself, or trauma inflicted by a sadistic person with many faces, each uglier than the next. It’s the love that exists in every corner of my life thanks to the wonderful people in it. And now, just a little bit thanks to Adam Driver.