Really Good, Actually

by Monica Heisey

Anyone trying to comfort me had been dealt an impossible task: too much attention and care felt like pity, not enough was proof that I was worthless and no one wanted to be around me.

The only activity that has ever really interested me is sitting around with my friends in flattering lighting, eating food and talking about who wanted to kiss us, and what we were wearing when they did.

For straight women in their late twenties, getting cheated on by a partner is basically jury duty. I told him this made me think 40% less of him but did not particularly impact my feelings about whether to spend the night in his bed. The relief that spread across his face seemed unrelated to sex. ‘Really?’ ‘You caught me at a good time,’ I said. ‘I’ve been reading a lot of Esther Perel.’

‘I spend a lot of time worrying that I’m fundamentally a worse person than I thought I was. How can you tell if something you did was a stupid mistake or a real sign of your character?’

Remembered everyone I love will die someday, many of them before me; that I will either know their deaths or hurt them with mine, and no matter what I do, the end is coming for all of us at a time we cannot know; that in the meantime my body will rot around my bones, getting creased and mottled and less efficient each day, and that this moment, right now, is the youngest and healthiest and most beautiful I’ll ever be, and I don’t feel that young or healthy or beautiful – I feel, actually, like I am losing a war with my own posture,