sit with the feeling

on taking people off the pedestal

Being good with words makes you either a writer or a liar. Sometimes both. Everything I’ve ever left between the lines I’ve paid for in internal bruises.

For the first time in a long time, the feeling is dirty. Not justified or sophisticated, tied with satin ribbons along the edges, not pending sympathy from strangers and lovers alike. It’s a zit under pressure, throbbing and begging for release — I know irreparable damage is guaranteed, so I leave it be and get in the shower. I’m above average on the sensitivity scale, so I was under the safe assumption I had already felt everything a person could feel in a lifetime. I was wrong. God is laughing at me, I think he likes it when I’m scared.

This state is off-putting in its unexpectedness — I’ve always been the owner-of-feeling type, regardless of the occasion, reinforcing my truths in cursive letters as though I have so much to say, justified in every irrational rationale. He did this, she did that, the whole world is going to know about it, pay up. Coins of pity and head-nodding in exchange for novelty. Something was different this morning when I woke up: I didn’t want to think about it, let alone speak. My usual righteousness abandoned me on the side of the road, and I feel naked without her. Gasping for air, I call my least judgmental friend. She’s beautiful, lives in Berlin, and never looks down on my wrongdoings. She tells me there’s no such thing as good emotions or bad emotions — all feelings are made equal, which is what makes them precious and mine. Nothing about this is precious. The anger is disfigured, severed, retroactive. What’s wrong with me, I say to her, I’ll feel nothing for a year, and then everything hits me with such ruthless velocity it might as well be a nuclear missile. Don’t tell NATO I’m in possession. Too removed from myself for a soul-to-mind-to-mouth alliance, so now they’re plotting against one another — complexity has never been exciting, just another archive to sort through. Calm women get the prize, don’t they? I’m chill. No, like, I’m genuinely so chill. I smile well, write decently, and go quiet the best. I’ll cry on cue and only bother you during commercial breaks. I can talk so much without saying anything. I’ll stare at you, idolizing, smiling because it hurts and not despite it. A fighter and a coward walk into a bar, and they both want to buy me a drink because they both see a glimpse of themselves in me.

Making somebody your life support is your second mistake. Thinking they’re vital to your survival is the first. No one should ever have that much power. But this is where I outsource my independence: I imagine a saint, a hero somewhere over the horizon, gathering my mistakes, dressing each one up like porcelain dolls, brushing their hair, telling me everything will be alright. Margaret, Dan, Olivia, Elise, or Josh, it doesn’t matter and I’ve lost count, though my hero list is the one thing I’ve been able to keep secret. Long before you know it, the dolls are hanging on strings and I’ve given my life away for the illusion of sustenance. I kiss my heroes goodbye once and brag about it for centuries. I made it about me again and you hate that, which is fine, but it was never about you either, so you can’t complain. The only time I feel safe is when I’m with you, hero, which, looking back, has only ever made me feel unsafe in your absence. To trust somebody with all you have to offer, to put your fate in their hands without consent, without knowledge even, how gross and impromptu and primed for failure.