Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

Although he didn’t seem particularly happy, he seemed undeniably whole, as though his world was contained within himself.

How can I describe what happened to me without the word love?

Being in love was like that to me, a shield, a higher purpose, a promise to something outside of yourself.

I love myself in love. I find my feelings fascinating and human, for once can sympathise with my own actions.

Being young and beautiful felt like a lot sometimes, felt like it translated to real-world power, but money shat all over it every time.

I hadn’t wanted to sleep with him. I had wanted never to sleep with him, had wanted us to keep talking, to wake up to his messages, to be amused by one another. I wanted our chaste coffee dates to go on and on, for there to be no end to these things, and this, the sex, was the end, I knew.

‘Oh, poor baby,’ I’d crow, and cradle his head to my chest and cover his face in a flood of kisses until I succeeded in making him laugh.

I had been looking forward to going there with him, introducing him to people, being seen with my beautiful, interesting boyfriend.

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.

(What could people be expected to tolerate of me? How much of what I needed could I reasonably demand?)

What I was feeling was the failure of superstition and charms – the unreliability of prayer.

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.

Am I so terrible that you are cursed to seek my opposite?

‘Do people ever tell you and her that you make a beautiful couple, like they used to with us? We looked right together because we are right together.

She could see how in love we were even at that distance, because everyone could.

I woke up every day back then with you staring down at me, stroking my hair, as though you couldn’t believe I was real. You can’t take back or deny what exists between us.

Come back to me. Or I’ll come there – I don’t care. I would go anywhere. ‘I don’t exist without you.

I close my eyes and imagine the feeling of you coming back to me, of us disappearing together.

I’ve never loved anyone but you, and I have loved you for so long now.

Being in love feels like nothing so much as hope; a distilled, clear hope which would be impossible to manufacture on your own.

One of the saddest things to feel is that nothing in the world is new, that you have exhausted all your interactions with it.

‘I mean, if you count the times we’ll spend a significant amount of time together from now on, more than a day at a time… those stints are limited. They’re very limited, really.’

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

My whole relationship with Ciaran was like that – a refuge, a singularity which obliterated other concerns. It was the best meal, the finest bottle of wine.

but I was in love and so I was insane,

It’s a peculiar anger, resenting doing something that nobody asked you to do.

And most of all, the feeling of walking around a foreign city: off an airbus in a short dress and sunglasses, a hopeful prayer for adventure pranging in my chest, feeling seen, made real anew by all the people who look with admiration or curiosity; those exchanges making it seem as though I could be anyone at all, begin new stories, live a thousand lives.

I had given up so much to be a part of this drama and I saw now how bad the part, how shoddy the script.

He did not love me – couldn’t, for what Me was there to love? What Me had he ever known?

‘You can’t complain about feeling bad, about being depressed, if you aren’t trying to sleep, trying to eat, trying to care about yourself.

They were always relief from the absence of what I feared, the ordinary, truly daily things: the coldness, and the ignorance, and the disdain, and the hatred.

How could I have asked him to love me, day after day, when the answer kept on being no? What desperation made me live that way?