Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

Why do you do it? Because I like to. Meaning, not so much that I take pleasure in it, but: I choose it.

I do not understand what I do; for I don’t do what I would like to do, but instead do what I hate. What an unhappy man I am. Who will rescue me from this body that is taking me to death? –Romans 7:15–25

I hadn’t known until that moment how delicately I had been keeping everything inside me together those last few months. My body felt as though it had been holding its breath for a very long time and had just realised it couldn’t do so for ever.

I said through my huddling and hiding that 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 didn’t ask love of him. 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 need shone through because it was real.

I came from her, she made this body-thing I hate and love so much. I resent her for producing it; I’m mortified I have made such poor use of it. How dare you? I want to scream at her, on the one hand; I love you so much! I’m sorry, on the other.

I wished I could unburden myself but I couldn’t verbalise what was happening because doing so would bring it into existence.

Sometimes this distance between everyone comforted and pleased me. I would die knowing things about myself that nobody else on earth did. There were experiences that lived only in me and could never be replicated or recounted. And sometimes, like now, the distance seemed too sad to live with.

I said sorry to my dad afterwards, but he understood. He suffers too.

I made mistakes like that all the time, seeking affirmation from the very worst people, so that what I must have been after deep down was confirmation of the fears instead of their dismissals.

I would love to have one moment of want in my life when I am sure what I’m feeling is all my own and nothing to do with men, with what has happened with men in the past, with what they have said about me and my body, what thoughts they have put in my head without me even knowing.

I hate my weakness, what I severed of myself and gave to him, but love it too, love it still. I do not take it back. I love the girl who did those things.

It isn’t fair, but there it is. When you love a person these things are nothing, or even lovable in and of themselves. But when you don’t love a person, they niggle at you. The person’s humanity is revealed too soon, before you can come to forgive it with love.