What It's Like in Words: A Novel

by Eliza Moss

When we broke up a year ago, she told me that my first impression was the right one. But how can I separate the first impression from the last one?

I felt more and more like writing was something I’d stumbled into and couldn’t find my way out of, like those hikers who die in caves.

The light behind his eyes clicked on: I had surprised him. Oh, well, that’s different, he said warmly, and the desire to please him bloomed like an addiction.

Pulling away, he whispered: There, now that’s taken care of.

That version was so close to this one that it didn’t matter.

I was always on high alert, like I was afraid to concentrate on something that wasn’t him.

He didn’t ask for my answer,

I didn’t recognize myself, but I still felt seen.

I hid the parts of myself that I didn’t like and sometimes I wondered how much of me was left visible after that.

I hadn’t heard his name in so long. Everyone just referred to him—if they ever did—as “your dad.” Like he belonged only to me.

I didn’t think about my pleasure because it wasn’t my pleasure I was addicted to.

If universes sprout from moments of indecision, then I have created hundreds.

Mum. Would Dad have been someone I could have called? Oh god, I missed my dad. He wasn’t even a person anymore, he was just slices of grief. Cord slippers. Bottle opener. Reading glasses. I wanted to be in our old house in Nairobi. I wanted to run into the ocean. I wanted to be a child again, but I also wanted him to be there.

I was trading my body for the hope of his heart, and he was saying yes to a cup of tea that he didn’t really want because someone else was making it.

I had wanted this so badly. His body. His hands. His smell. But what was it that I actually wanted? Because the sex was never good, was it? It was just a period of time where I had him. It was addictive. It was control. But he didn’t want me and he wasn’t even pretending to.

Everywhere and all the time. Invisible but there, there but dead: the gravestone I couldn’t put flowers on.

She told me to save my first draft. The more you edit, the more you stray from your original intention, she said. It’s the same in relationships. We form a connection with someone at a writers’ event or in a hedge fund café, and over time that connection gets replaced by its memory, and so we edit and rewrite and delete in an effort to recapture what we felt.

We stayed in the pub for two large glasses of wine and conversation concurrently razor-sharp and watercolor. I wanted to write it all down so that I could read it back.

I asked if she would still be my friend if she was wrong. She went silent and then, staring at her palms, asked: Is that all I am to you?

But I couldn’t finish because tears were streaming. I hated that this was my body’s response to pain.

What if it was never real happiness? Just the absence of unhappiness?

It’s time to grow up and remember things as they happened.

I know it will be like that for a while, but not forever.