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.