Interesting Facts about Space

by Emily R. Austin

“Do you not know how you feel?”

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.

women are trained to be polite to men even when men are ugly and make them feel uncomfortable.

good-looking people are more likely to be depraved.

They look like women who have packaged themselves fully to oblige the male gaze.

I don’t think I am what someone would envision if they cut into a cake and saw pink.

I once saw a ghost, for example. I thought I dreamed it, but my mom remembers too. I screamed; the ghost absconded from my bedroom, and then my mom arrived.

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.

Apple w/ holes beating like a heart - drawing idea

I bet her soul is a big red apple with no bites taken out of it.

I don’t want to be anywhere near other people’s hearts.

I feel like I am on a stage. I feel pressure to perform, as if I am an actress wearing the mask of my own face, playing the role of a professional, put-together young lady.

A theater prompter lives in my head and shouts cues at me incessantly.

I was a weird, disoriented tadpole, and now I am this warty toad.

“You think the reason women have interests is to be quirky?”

Neil coded lol

“But it’s also because I’m happy I’m not the perpetrator.”

I felt this deep fascination, an intense draw, mixed with sadness and a sort of rejection.

Whenever my mom says that something about me reminds her of my dad, I feel slighted. It feels underhanded. I’ve always interpreted those comments as her way of saying something like, I love you, but you’re horrible.

Bojack vibes and resonant

I managed to overcome aspiring to appear normal but never really figured out what I should aspire to be.

I wish I could have one nice interaction with everyone and then disappear.

not truly desiring any high besides the one I got leaving a room.

“Let’s promise to never meet again so we can’t ruin it. Let’s stay nice people to each other to balance out how we’re bad for other people.”

“Don’t talk yourself out of fear. Fear is important. It keeps us safe. There is a reason we feel fear.”

I think clothes are meant to be worn. No matter the occasion, there is an outfit.

By the time Ben entered the picture, I had become quiet and agreeable.

So resonant to comphet

I wonder if she has a box of Polly’s old love letters that she looks through at night. Maybe she hopes they will get back together. I hate thinking of someone feeling like that.

I thought everyone coped by imagining reality isn’t what it is—by

I feel like I have tricked her into thinking that she loves me, but she doesn’t really. She thinks she does, but she doesn’t really.

we’re less likely to have experienced the growing pains associated with forming our true adult identities. We have our second adolescence late, after we realize who we are.

I think the way to test whether I am capable of truly loving people back is by ending things. I think if I really loved someone, I would stay away from them.

I think about how I hope no one ever stores a box of things I give them. I hope I never write anyone a poem.

I hope I leave her alone.

I simultaneously want Polly to text me and for her to never speak to me again. I want to be hit by an asteroid.

it’s making me tear up. Not because it’s sad, but because it’s strange to discover that I’ve had shared experiences.

I’d rather keep my phobia. I suspect I’ll be keeping it regardless. This is just an expensive way of hurting myself.

“How could you do this?” and “I forgive you; of course I forgive you.”

Today, when I feel upset, I try to distract myself. I listen to a podcast. I think about space.

Good people want to know what they did wrong.

“I have PTSD, yeah. And I guess part of that is avoidance.

I thought it was just avoiding scenarios and locations but now i see how avoidance extends to relationships, intimacy, friendships, vulnerability

I wasn’t traumatized by the fire. I was traumatized by my dad believing the first horrible thing he ever heard about me.