Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You

Most people think things are not real unless they are spoken, that it’s the uttering of something, not the thinking of it, that legitimizes it. I suppose this is why people always want other people to say “I love you.” I think just the opposite — that thoughts are realest when thought, that expressing them distorts or dilutes them, that it is best for them to stay in the dark climate-controlled airport chapel of your mind, that if they’re released into the air and light they will be affected in a way that alters them, like film accidentally exposed.

She said nothing in her stop-being-silly-I’m-not-going-to-encourage-you way. Just ignore him and he’ll go away, my mother used to say to Gillian when we were young and I bugged her. Just ignore him. All he wants is attention. In retrospect there seems to be something almost cruel about that — to simultaneously acknowledge and refuse someone’s desire for attention — especially a child’s. All he wants is attention, as if it’s bad to want attention, like wanting money or power or fame. Perhaps it’s why I prefer to be ignored now; I’ve been warped in some irreversible way.