Interesting Facts about Space

by Emily R. Austin

For my mom

One of the perks of being a lesbian is that it is less critical for me to vet whether my date will kill me. I tend to fear I am the person in the equation who dates should be wary of. I have been giving my address out to strange women, willy-nilly. I did not stop to consider whether I should suggest a coffee shop, park bench, or police station parking lot to Polly.

Headphones serve more than one purpose. I don’t just wear them to listen to my murder podcast. I also wear them to prevent people from talking to me. Having one headphone in signals that I am open to small talk, or to having my shoulder tapped on. I am not, so I put in both.

I click play on the next episode. I feel all my muscles unclench. Nothing puts me at ease more than hearing someone calmly discuss homicide.

I hate being startled. I prefer controlled forms of fear. I like my podcasts, horror movies, and ghost stories that I can pause and rewind. I handle fear sort of like a warhorse. I could charge bravely into a planned battle, take in the sights of bombs and corpses, but I would still be spooked by an unanticipated barn rat.

I do not know why we assume attractive people are less likely to be killers, anyways. In my experience, good-looking people are more likely to be depraved.

I have held newborns before and thought, while looking into their dark, cloudy eyes, They must be struggling to adjust to their human coil. There is this sense I get while cradling babies that their life force is imprisoned in their ineffectual baby bodies, and that a large part of being an infant involves grappling with your physical existence until you have the dexterity to shake a rattle.

I hope there’s an alternate universe where my mom is married to some kindhearted man who loves her. I hope she has a sewing room, and multiple well-adjusted kids. I think that would have happened if I weren’t born.

oof <3

If I could choose, I would rather not know that I once saw a ghost. I wish I could wonder if I dreamed that. Knowing that I truly saw a ghost, or at least that I truly believed I saw a ghost, is an unpleasant reality. It either means that ghosts exist, or more likely, and more worrisome—it means that I am capable of hallucinating.

I worry that I am a shell for something bad. That deep down, in the spot where most people keep their souls, I keep a weird little bug. I picture him there, leaning on the apple core of my soul, crunching on what remains of what’s good of me. I struggle to stomach sincerity, or to express any authentic emotion, because everything feels insincere when you suspect that deep down, in the chasm of yourself, the most sentient part of you is a little ill-intentioned monster.

Maybe this is all some complicated form of psychological self-harm. The meat in my skull wants me to suffer. Maybe I deserve to suffer.

!!

It is strange to me when killers want credit for their murders, as if it is an accomplishment. Killing someone is not much of a feat. It is simple, logistically, to kill someone. People die pretty easily.

Stop it, you’re fine, I tell myself. You’re being nuts. He’s just bald. Who cares if he’s bald? A separate voice in my bones replies gravely: I do. I can’t help it. I know it’s not a very nice fear to have. He can’t help that he’s bald. It’s not his fault. It might be a sensitive topic for him.

“I don’t know who I am. I don’t know who I want to be. I wish I were someone different.”

The memory of who I was when I was younger faded slightly, and I was desperate to be liked so I could go to school without wanting to kill myself.

!!!

Heterosexuality is really shoved down children’s throats.

I know it is ridiculous, but for some reason, bald men are sitting in the same room in my mind as murderers, monsters, and John Wayne Gacy. I do not know why they are in there. It is not a choice I made.

“You know.” She leans back in her chair. “One thing I always tell my patients is that everyone can say it could have been worse. Don’t diminish the parts of your childhood that were difficult because they were comparatively better than others.”

<3

She explains, “So PTSD is a condition that occurs due to experiencing a traumatic event or a series of events that make you feel hopeless, trapped, or scared. It manifests differently in people. I believe your experience with it is also impacted by the way you process and learn.”

!!!

“Dissociation is one PTSD symptom I’ve noted you have. You mentioned nightmares, depersonalizing, brain fog. Hyperarousal is another symptom I see in you. You interpret situations as unsafe due to increased vigilance.

“And finally, the last PTSD symptom, which is what I’d like to talk about today if that’s all right with you, is avoidance.” She points at the paper in my hands. There is a red heading that says, “WHAT ARE YOU AVOIDING?” She says, “Many people with PTSD don’t speak about the trauma event. You have blank spots in your memory, right?”

“If your objective is to resolve your phobia, we can probably do that without digging into this with exposure therapy. However, you have PTSD, and I believe the best way that is treated is with cognitive processing therapy. This involves talking about the traumatic event, how it’s affected you, and then writing about it.” Fuck.

Saying that out loud embarrasses me. Despite knowing that Dr. Jeong is a therapist and has probably heard lots of people discuss wanting to kill themselves, my face feels hot. “You wanted to kill yourself? You had thoughts about that?” My cheeks flushed. “Yeah. I did.”

I spent a lot of time growing up trying to seem normal. Sometimes I worry I neglected doing the internal work most people do while they’re developing; I was too preoccupied camouflaging. I think I might be stunted because of it. I think I missed a step.

!!!

I realize I’m gay, but I don’t realize much of who I am beyond that. I feel like I’m still missing some crucial information that I need to fully form myself. I feel half-developed. I’m worried that if I were cut open, I’d see all my organs were half-made. I think I’m missing parts.

I don’t ever want to become my full self. There is no reality I can envision where myself now doubled is good. I think that if I were fully formed, I would be awful. I’d be even worse than I am now. I’d take after my dad. I’d be terrible.

I think I’m a bad person. I think I was born with the ingredient predators are born with. I don’t trust myself. I think if I don’t restrain myself, I become selfish, opportunistic, and dishonest. I am pretending to be someone normal, but I’m not. If I let my guard down, I am liable to hurt people.

“Did I fuck you up?” Her voice breaks. “What? No,” I lie.

When stars fall into black holes, they seem to do it slowly. Because of gravitational time dilation, they look as if they are paused. If a person were to fall into a black hole, they would be spaghettified; however, to anyone watching, they would look as if they didn’t fall.

I lie in a soup of myself, wishing I could rocket into space. I want to float alone in the dark, silent void. I want to be the type of frozen asteroid that is burned up by a star, and never creates craters in the moon or kills off dinosaurs.

I am thinking about how everyone’s behavior is motivated by many secret things. I know there are reasons why people do things that I am not in on. I know I am not the center of the universe. The sun does not revolve around me. There are lots of questions I will never know the answers to. I don’t know if wormholes exist, or why my dad didn’t like me, or why I started a fire. Maybe there are good reasons. Maybe everything I think is wrong.