Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

I was not without value, but the value I held was not the kind I wanted to hold, and I did not know how to exchange it.

It felt good in a way, because he was so excited and I was pleased to make him so, but I was filled with sadness at each new thing he did to me.

All the things that Lisa did for her own genuine pleasure were things I thought looked good, things I didn’t want for their own sake.

I knew that it could never happen that way for me because I couldn’t spend a day, much less a series of years, without looking around me for someone to feel things about.

It was disturbing, as it always was to be made aware that people with their own internal lives and individual perspectives existed all around you.

but we might think sometimes about the misery of having a teenage body, a teenage girl’s body especially, how tedious and painful and punitive,

I felt crushed with the sudden certainty that I was the crazy one.

feeling something true from within myself, or was I living out a fantasy I had assembled?

I had made myself an image and it had not worked.

I was the woman. I had suffered.

there would never be a bone sharp enough, a size small enough to let me reach the place I wished to get to.

I know what I want should count.