Acts of Desperation

by Megan Nolan

I think that I wanted more than anything to be real like those girls, but I didn’t know how to be, didn’t know any other way to be close to these boys except for partying with them. 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.

What would you choose? Either you can be famous for being a shrill prop in a great man’s work, a victim sacrificed to the gods of art, or you can nod along and applaud. You can have a seat at the big boys’ table for being such a good sport. So, go ahead: ha ha ha.

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

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.

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.

How lucky I have been that so much of my pain is from fearing the loss of what I already have, instead of suffering the absence entirely, as Ciaran did.

‘You always think your pain is the most painful. You always think it’s uniquely awful.’

I hate to hear them tell me what I am, even or especially when what they think I am is kind or brilliant or beautiful. I hate when they insist that I have no faults, that my laziness or violence or cruelty simply don’t exist. 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.