Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

Female suffering is cheap and is used cheaply by dishonest women who are looking only for attention – and of all our cardinal sins, seeking attention must surely be up there.

I didn’t want her near me, because she was the only one able to see me for what I was, but I couldn’t lose her for the very same reason.

Mediating your own victimhood is just part of being a woman. Using it or denying it, hating it or loving it, and all of these at once. Being a victim is boring for everyone involved. It is boring for me to present myself through experiences which are instrumentalised constantly as narrative devices in soap operas and tabloids. Is this why I am so ashamed of talking about certain events, or of finding them interesting? This is part of the horror of being hurt generically. Your experiences are so common that they become impossible to speak about in an interesting way.

How impoverished my internal life had become, the scrabbling for a token of love from somebody who didn’t want to offer it.

How lucky I have been that so much of my pain is from fearing the loss of what I already have, instead of suffering the absence entirely, as Ciaran did.

‘This is so you,’ Reuben said. ‘What is?’ ‘You always think your pain is the most painful. You always think it’s uniquely awful.’