How To Break Into A Million Pieces And Not Die

For no apparent reason other than pain and one too many beers, I wonder about robots and whether they have secret lives that are heavy with emotion and something else that we humans cannot see. I did just finish reading Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor so that may be why, but think about it. We see and think of robots as soulless scraps of metal and plastic who, although they display intelligence far above a human level, still remain objects unable to process life and meaning. Now I’m wondering if perhaps they were something before machine.

I know I’m thinking too much and it doesn’t exactly make sense, but right now I feel like a robot as I mourn the loss of the woman I was before now. I may be what I am now, but you should have seen me when I was in love. God, I was incandescent mhen! What a glorious time that was. Now I think of that version of me with the kind of fondness reserved for places that no longer exist. But innocence has never known how to survive for long in this world. One day you’re decorating a home with your person and filling the shelves with knickknacks and tiny little presents received in love while resting in the warm embrace of your lover who— and get this, hated you and your guts the entire time.

The next moment, you’re clearing out the flat that bore witness to your shared love and laughter together. You’re standing in the middle of the room with the last item, a small plant in hand, wondering if any of it was real while holding all the million parts of you that are threatening to come undone; held together by invisible threads of dignity and affirmations that remind you of your self-worth. But when you leave this place, you will walk straight into a bar and drown yourself in beer after beer after beer after beer as a final act of surrender. You will no longer mourn the loss of something that introduced you to the darkest days of your life, where you had to go down on your knees and pray to a God you’re not sure will answer, to please give you your life and your peace back.

Tonight you pray silently to that same God again in words that are a little different, yet familiar.

May a narcissist never love me again.