Never Have I Ever

by Joshilyn Jackson

She said it was like Never Have I Ever, but not any version I’d ever played. It began innocently enough, with everyone confessing the worst thing they’d done that day.

We were grown-up women, so we packed our worsts away in hidden boxes. We were mothers, so we sank those boxes under jobs and mortgages and meal plans. Mothers have to sink those boxes deep.

I didn’t want my life to be interesting ever, ever again, but I liked interesting on paper, contained between closable covers.

Food had long been my comfort, and I did not deserve to be comforted. I wanted the hunger. It was an angry, alive thing that I let loose inside myself as punishment.

I had made our home into a place full of love and acceptance, but I had locked myself outside it.

Isn’t that what diving gave me? To float in the same

space as the truth, silent and unafraid.

No one walks around holding their ugliest sin in the palm of their hand, staring at it. Our hurts are heavy, and we let them sink.

My past was loose, alive inside me, roiling in my head and in my guts like a thick, tangible howling.