Taking the batteries out will not put out the fire. Silencing me will not fix the source of pain. Feelings aren’t choices. Intentions aren’t impact. Does love actually exist? The body is stitched and stapled together, slab raised to the sky forested with lightning rods, but the sky is as clear as if storms never existed and were just a story I told myself long ago, or a special effect on TV. As improbable an explanation as unicorns for narwhal teeth, dragons for dinosaur bones, demonic alien ghosts for the autistic meltdowns of a tortured, abused child. I don’t hate people until they hurt me. It’s hard to hear, somehow, that what happened to me was not natural, but was the result of choices people made and rationalised doubling down on. It’s hard to hear what humans can do to each other, for reasons that have nothing to do with what we deserve, without warning, in secret, alone, betraying some level of knowing that This Is Wrong. It’s harder to hear the things people say without thinking when they don’t know what to say and start quoting the most poisonous aphorisms and radioactively positive capitalist wall décor like it’s some unique epiphany. The best words I heard were, “That fucking sucks.” The only person who ever loved me died, do you really think the f-word is more offensive than sprinkling me with words like glitter-craft-herpes that will take many months of showering to get off me? Sometimes I think my bitterness is a psychological histamine reaction, a defence against homeopathic poisonous positivity buried in thick layers of sweet chocolate and sugar. Advice is a nice, stiletto knife in the dark. Validation is hydrogen peroxide, a dose of opioid that trusts that sometimes I need pain relief in the moment and it doesn’t automatically lead to addiction if I get the long-term humanising, support, care, and love transfusions that match my type. Whatever that is. But when I feel loved then it’s mostly in the impact of actions, and the words are mostly distractions, or stating the obvious. If someone loves me they never have to say so. Hell, look at dogs. No words, just love.