Brief Interviews with Hideous Men

You have grown into a new fragility.

[flexion of upraised fingers to signify tone quotes]

I swear kid but you have never seen anything like this heartbreak on this girl with the tits, and I start telling her how she’s right the guy’s a shit and don’t even deserve and how it’s true most guys are shit and how my heart’s going out and all like that.’
A—:‘Heh heh. So then what happened?’
R—:‘Heh heh.’
A—:‘Heh heh heh.’

Despairing, then, of describing the emotional pain or expressing its utterness to those around her, the depressed person instead described circumstances, both past and ongoing, which were somehow related to the pain, to its etiology and cause, hoping at least to be able to express to others something of the pain’s context, its—as it were—shape and texture.

Me leaving is not the confirmation of all your fears about me. It is not. It’s because of them. Okay? Can you see that? It’s your fear I can’t take. It’s your distrust and fear I’ve been trying to fight. And I can’t anymore. I’m out of gas on it. If I loved you even a little less maybe I could take it. But this is killing me, this constant feeling that I’m always scaring you and never making you feel secure. Can you see that?’

It’s not like I’m saying given our history I deserved a whole lot of trust right off the bat. But you still don’t at all.

You have decided being scared is caused mostly by thinking.