Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

My misery seemed to come from knowing I was not good enough to warrant the objectively lucky life I had been given.

What was good about him was that he wasn’t even the most important part of what made him good. He made the world itself seem good and ripe and ready to be run towards, he made me feel funny and new and fizzing, and like he wouldn’t even need to be there for that to be true.

When I was small, before drinking and men and the rest, books were the thing that could absorb me entirely and let me forget myself. I had liked the idea of making something for someone else to do that in. It seemed like the only thing I might have a real desire to do. That was a long time ago, of course, and now it seemed borderline incomprehensible to me that someone could dedicate so much time and effort to a thing without a known outcome. Life was so pointless, so opaque and shifting, that I could only think about immediate feelings. Immediacy was all I had.

I’d thought that a man’s love would make me so full up I’d never need to drink or eat or cut or do anything at all to my body ever again. I’d thought they’d take it over for me.