Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

Every day that passed in which I was easy to be with, and accommodating, and a good girlfriend, was a ritual offered up. My body expected the perseverance to mean something. And suddenly it was clear that my intentions were meaningless, and I could no more magic him into loving me than I could an animal back to life.

I pleaded with him to see how small I really was.

I was nothing, and I was happy to be nothing if nothing was what pleased him best. If nothing was the least trouble, then I would be it, and gladly. I would be completely blank and still if that was what worked, or as loud as he needed me to be to take up his silences. I would be energetic and lively if he was bored, and when he tired of that, I would become as prosaic and dully useful as cutlery.

I didn’t want him to look in my direction and see me; for there was no thing I could say, with confidence, was me. I panicked when my n...

I enjoyed my pain because it made me less than ever. I was nothing but living nerves, a petri dish of matter. I had no characteristics outside of it.

He wanted me to not be the negative space which would fit in around his positive presence, and because I knew this, knew he might be able to truly love me if only I could be a real person, I failed even harder.

I refracted his words and bent them back to mean something good for me.

a person whose identity is secondary to their ability to make things easier for everyone else.

You hate me, I thought sometimes, when you see me drink or cry or cut myself, but you don’t hate me in the right way. Your disgust is domesticated. I fear that your distaste is that of your average husband – not the glittering and sexual kind you used to show me when you looked down at me, before I won you.

I was wallowing in the glamour of my sadness.

When they speak this way I am even less in my body than usual, feeling the sickness of a stranger look me in the eye and describe what is not there. What I am feeling is their disregard for my reality. I am being made to wear whatever particular fantasy they wish to project.

I hate them less afterwards, because I’ve made myself as pathetic as they are.