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“Most of the strong feelings we have go unspoken,” says Emily.1 It’s a cold thought. A striking epiphany, for a conversation about a book on unspoken love. This line of prose grabs me by the throat and refuses to let go until I’ve thought myself into a spiral. 

Strong feelings that go unspoken. Unspoken except when I’m off my face drunk, panicking and sweating in bathrooms, tears rolling. I am not a good person. The knowledge sits behind my eyes and presses against the nerve, an insistent pain. Every word out of my sober mouth comes parcelled and packaged sweetly, no one can know the truth. Vowels tied with ribbons and consonants wrapped like gifts. Tell me I’m good, the casing croons, tell me I’m worth it. I’m giving for the selfish joy of hearing thank you. I need appreciation like I need air. I am strangled with it. Imposter syndrome of the first degree. I map and script every interaction. The feeling has been festering for years.

Stomach wound.
I am swollen with it. 

Bloated and undone with the need to please, to gag on being wanted, and only writing about it, never changing. The strong feeling goes unspoken unless I unspool like a bobbin and come apart completely. My whole design is loose stitches and dripping ink, so let me keep it, the lie I’ve made. 

That’s the character. That’s the voice. 

MIDDLE

What makes someone good anyhow? I think good and I think  

Mother Theresa,
the Virgin Mary, I think  
saints and martyrs. What makes them good?  

Selflessness. Altruism. 

The word of others. 
We rely on others to make us good. 

I am not a good person. No one is entirely good. I tell myself that to feel better. Sometimes I want to rip my heart out with the force of how good I want to be. Peel open my ribcage, offer up some skin as sacrifice.  

“Make me good!” I yell at the sky, “I want to be good!” 

Is that a sign of true goodness, that I want it so badly? Is my self-imposed kindness to others – kindness used to fill the pit inside myself – enough that others think I am good, am selfless, am altruistic? Does that take me back to the beginning again? 

It’s so much easier to blame someone else. To make a god answer
for the rot inside. But it’s all me, you know? All me. Black to the bone.
Mildewed. Dead and dying again. Remember?
Do you remember?

B O T T O M 

Edit: rewind. Cut the bullshit, try again. 

“Most of the strong feelings we have go unspoken.” It’s an honest thought. A striking epiphany. It expects you to spiral. 

I have talked about the strong feelings. The ones that press and pain. I try to out fake them but fall back into the rhythms. I tell myself I am just human, and this is the part that comes with it. My sufferings are not special. I am not the worst person to have ever existed. That is a selfish thought, to believe that I am the most anything ever. Humans put themselves at the centre of the universe. Individuals feel they are the very navel of the world. It’s all context. All perspective. 

Let me live my lie because I am trying. The feelings mutate. Black mould in my lungs. No definitive answer. Morality is subjective, that’s the bitch of it all. Only I can teach myself to be good, tell myself I am good, I am trying my best. It’s an internalisation. An ending and a beginning, ouroboros eating its own tail. Cycle to be broken. 

There’s no conclusion here, it keeps going on.