Interesting Facts about Space

by Emily R. Austin

There are parts of me I wish I could train out that I can’t. You can train a dog not to bite, sit on the furniture, or piss in the house, but you can’t train them to become birds. I don’t like a lot of unalterable things about myself. Even when I’m not viewing footage of me on YouTube, I always feel sort of tortured as my own spectator. I want to boo, cringe, and splat rotten fruit at my own head until someone closes the curtains. I want to heckle that I wish I were someone different. I hate my voice. I hate the words I choose. I hate my instincts and the way I think. I hate that I am self-absorbed enough to hate myself in detail. I think I am a bad person. I feel self-loathing so deeply I think if I cracked myself open, I would see the physical manifestation of it calcified in my bones like a geode.

Sometimes, when I have a nice interaction with someone, I hope I never see them again. Occasionally, I have a nice chat with a cashier, for example. I leave the store thinking, I hope I never see them again. I avoid their register if I do. Sometimes, when I visit extended family, like my mom’s cousins, or a great aunt, I think it’s a shame they saw me now at my age. I think it might have been better for them to have last seen me as a kid. I think seeing me now might ruin the memory of when I was little. I often stop texting people I’m seeing after having a nice time with them. I wish I could have one nice interaction with everyone and then disappear.