Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

by Emily R. Austin

I spend a few moments wondering why she asked me to sit. I then begin wondering why it matters to me why she asked me to sit. Why do I need to know what her rationale is? Why can’t I just trust that the people around me have their own justification for their requests and their behavior? Why can’t I be like a dog and sit when I’m asked to, without wondering why?

I wonder if my death will be what defines me.

Thinking about washing the dishes feels a lot like thinking of going for a jog. I will do it tomorrow.

Sometimes I wonder if I have really been the same person my whole life. I stare at the picture, and think: Is that really me? I have this bizarre feeling like I was a different person at every other stage of my life. I feel so removed from myself then. Sometimes I feel like I was a different person a month ago. A day. Five minutes. Now.

never know how to answer that question because I don’t feel like I am out. I feel like I am in a constant state of coming out, and like I always will be. I have to come out every time I meet someone.

“I find I feel less anxious when I spend my time trying to make the people around me happier,”

I stare at my mouth in the mirror. Smile, I tell myself. Smile. I read once that fake smiling can trick your brain into believing you’re happy, which can then spur actual feelings of happiness. I gape at my smiling reflection. I stare into my own lifeless eyes as I grin manically at myself like a deranged chimp.

“Think about your senses. Ask yourself: What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell? What do I taste? What do I feel?

I hate it when people catch me looking at them.

“What is your biggest fear?” he asks me. “Dying, I guess,” I reply. “I’m afraid of living an unfulfilled life,” he counters, making my answer sound trite.

I find it so bizarre that I occupy space, and that I am seen by other people. I feel like I am falling through space and Eleanor just threw me a rose. It’s such a sweet, pointless gesture. It would be less devastating to fall through space alone, without someone else falling next to me. Whenever someone does something nice for me, I feel intensely aware of how strange and sad it is to know someone.

“The worst criminals look like everyday people,”

I asked myself, “Is there anything I want right now?” and then answered “fries.” I therefore decided to buy the fries instead of killing myself because that seemed logical. You shouldn’t kill yourself when you still want to eat.

I came to the realization that every moment exists in perpetuity regardless of whether it’s remembered. What has happened has happened; it occupies that moment in time forever. I was an eleven-year-old girl lying in the grass one summer. I knew in that moment that was true and recognized that I would blaze through moments for the rest of my life, forgetting things, and becoming ages older, until I forgot everything—so I consoled myself by committing to remember that one moment.

I have chosen happiness. Out of all the emotions set out on the table, I have selected it. It is by far the superior option. It’s insane to think I would have ever picked one of those shittier emotions before—when all the while, I could have chosen shiny, shimmering, iridescent happiness.

I am ready to feel happy, universe. Lay it on me.

I am still waiting for the happiness I chose to kick in.

My mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby, and her mother had a baby. Every woman in my family before me lived to have a baby—just so that baby could grow up to have another baby. If I don’t have a baby, then all of those women reproduced just so that I could exist. I am the final product. I am the final baby.

“Sometimes I regret being born at all. I regret more things than I don’t.”

“You’re an idiot,” I hear myself saying. Stop. “And you’re the worst kind of idiot because you have no idea that you’re an idiot.”

“I’m over here crippled by how insignificant and stupid I know I am, and yet you’re out here just vomiting daft, illogical thoughts as if you know anything.”

It’s easy to feel like you understand everything in life when you’re big-headed, self-important, and stupid.”

I read once that women are born with all the eggs that they will ever produce in their life. That means the egg that formed me is as old as my mother. From that perspective, part of me is fifty-one.

It’s strange people don’t like how their bodies look. It’s strange we waste any of our time concerning ourselves with how our skin drapes over our bones or how fat cultivates.

There are a lot of things on earth that I think would be considered magic if they weren’t real. Dreaming, for example. The fact that babies are created inside of women’s bodies; the whole concept of conception. Castles. Trees. Whales. Lions. Birds. Rainbows. Water. The northern lights. Volcanos. Lightning. Fire.

I feel simultaneously intensely insignificant and hyperaware of how important everyone is.

One day I will die, and one day everyone I know will die. One day everyone I don’t know will die. One day every animal and plant on this planet will die. One day earth itself will die, and one day all of humanity, and all relics of human life.