Unfamiliar To Sonder: The Five Core Emotions

An auto-fictional piece by Georgia Bowan

Unfamiliar To Sonder: The Five Core Emotions

By Georgia Bowan

Guilt

I remember my mother standing wide-eyed in the bathroom, her reflection vacant in the old mirror above the sink. Her arms are skinny, her elbows are dripping with loose skin. Collarbones, sharp and jagged like the blades of a bear trap. Her bloated stomach looks as if some kind of small marsupial creature has chosen to reside under her skin during a game of hide and seek.

At seven years old, I think that this is possibly the best hiding place for such a game.

My mother’s skin stretches over her elongated and bony frame, right over her belly bump. I grit my teeth because it reminds me of thin rubber that is about to snap. I try on her jewellery when she’s not home. Even though she is constantly scolding me for playing with her things without permission, I pick up her grandmother’s pearls. I remember my uncle telling me that one can tell if freshwater pearls are authentic or not, based on whether you can make a dent in them. I bite down on the pearl necklace with my porcelain baby teeth.

At seven years old, I can’t wait to grow up.

I sink my teeth into the pearls and am surprised when every one of them scatters off the string that previously bound them together. They gather at my little feet like, what I imagine, snow might look like, falling in a pile on the ground. There is no dent in the pearl I chewed, they are faux. My eyes are brimming with hot tears.

At seven years old, this is the end of me. I will never recover from this one.

My mother scolded me when I ate play dough that one time, when I accidentally broke her favourite wine glass, and when I told her I didn’t want a baby brother or sister in case she loves them more than me.

At seven years old, I am certain my mother will never forgive me for what I have done to her grandmother’s pearls.

When she comes home, I come clean to her with my hands clenched in fists by my side. I must prepare myself for the worst, but when I tell her, I notice crimson begins to trickle down her veiny thighs. I ask my mother why she’s bleeding, and she begins to cry. There is nothing worse than seeing an adult cry, I think to myself.

At seven years old, my mother’s sobs are the most confronting and gut-wrenching sounds I have ever heard.

Does she need a Band-Aid? I ask her if this could be the baby in her guts trying to let her know that it’s ready to come out and meet me. My mother continues to sob and doesn’t answer me. I never meet the baby.

Longing

Thirty-eight. Male. Caucasian. Red in the ears and three lemon lime and bitters in, the man who sat across from her had no surname. With his hands clenched together tightly on the table in front of him, he was strange looking. Andrew had thin hair that sprouted above his gleaming forehead and exhausted eyes that probably hadn’t seen a woman’s naked body for a very long time, or at least not in the flesh. He had dark hair growing on his fingers that made her grimace, and he was shorter than she thought he would be. Andrew was a watered-down copy of the man she had seen on the screen.

“You didn’t mention in your profile that you don’t drink,” she said almost too politely.

In truth, she found that this man’s stiffly sober demeanour had created a dense wall between the two of them. She tried to ignore how sad this sounded, and what exactly it said about her as a person. It was a reminder of her inability to connect with other humans unless there was a mutual consumption of alcohol to loosen the atmosphere.

Andrew No-Surname looked down at his soft drink and shrugged. “I watch what I put in my body, that’s all. I saw a Tweet that said booze is the main cause of weight gain.” His eyes glanced over her body in mild disapproval as he said this, before settling back on the menu in front of him. This made her wince.

Why did she suddenly want to gouge her own eyes out with a fork?

She wondered if Andrew was feeling the same familiar disappointment as she was. Was she also a watered-down copy of the woman he had seen online? Was she the same woman he had swiped right on? Was he taking note of her hunched shoulders, the outline of her small and misshapen breasts, the pot belly she hid beneath a napkin in her lap?

Did these things sicken him? It was entirely possible. He sickened her, that was for sure.

Maybe he was focused on the large, pointed nose that extended from her face like an erection, something he would not be getting tonight. She felt heat gather at the back of her neck.

“I see you like a glass or two.” Andrew joked, but he didn’t look at her when he said it so maybe it wasn’t a joke.

She forced a chuckle. “Well, I come from a long line of vineyard enthusiasts. Some might call it ‘alcoholism’ but we like to think of it as having a taste for the finer things in life!”

The unfamiliar man did not laugh. She did not know if he was supposed to.

She retreated quickly, slinking back in her seat. “That was a stupid joke…I was just joking, don’t worry.” she fussed. She reached for her drink.

It had been a pathetic joke; she wouldn’t have laughed either. She cleared her throat and downed the rest of her glass. Andrew rose an eyebrow at her as she violently gulped the liquid down. It no longer burned like it once did. It was like water, sweet, holy water. By now, she was noticing a couple of grey hairs in the roots of his hair. She tried not to think about the fact it had only been forty minutes since they had arrived at the depressing Mexican restaurant Andrew had chosen to take her to for their first date. Already, she was on her third glass of cheap Riesling. She tried not to think about how loud the family of five sitting at the table next to them was.

She tried not to think about how the whole affair was miserable in general.

He was probably thinking that this woman was not the one for him, and she was most definitely sure that he was not the one for her. It was all becoming very clear; this ordeal had been a waste of time for both. Love would not fall into her lap any time soon. She was saddened by this thought as she finished the rest of her third glass.

Envy

I’m cherishing it, violent thoughts, and all.

The little black holes in my skin are sucking in dirt from all around me.

Fleshy crevices, tiny pores. They do their best not to clot.

Maybe this time I’ll win, I think to myself.

As if love is something floating in the air that I must stalk, catch, and consume.

Like it’s something that I must compete for.

As if I can grab it before anyone else does.

This time I’ll prevail, I think.

I am some sort of hostile dog, and I need to get food into my guts.

Quickly, and as soon as possible.

In the end, I am well aware that seeking pleasure elsewhere,

Will lead to nothing but decay.

Lament

On the couch lies a rotted corpse. Its eyes are closed. Its mouth is agape like a fish out of water. The dead animal, I imagine, has pools of milk for eyes and scales that have been delicately peeled off its fragile body. With no thoughts and without a pulse, it lifelessly waits to be consumed.

But the corpse before me is breathing.

The creature’s sunken chest rises and falls as it takes air in weakly. It lifts its bony frame from the couch, wearing only three-day-old underwear and a filthy singlet, it moves towards the fridge to feed. Its ribs are defined through its tight shirt, and I begin to wonder how a human heart could even fit inside such a small and enclosed cage. I watch my future self as she crawls back to the safety of her couch, claws reaching towards her home.

In the living room, a boy and a girl are huddled beside each other in filthy pyjamas. Unwashed faces, matted hair. My flesh and blood are eight and nine years of age, I can see it so clearly now. My son and daughter order Chinese food. They know the menu back to front but still want to look at the pictures in the pamphlet just one more time.

Anhedonia

Onions made him cry; he knew this.

Jimmy closed his hand around the purple sphere in his palm. It smelled earthy and faintly of soil. He was standing alone in the kitchen, inspecting the shimmery legume in front of him, thinking. With his father’s favourite knife, he began to shed away the layers of paper-thin skin that fell to the counter. It looked like sloughed snakeskin, Jimmy thought to himself. He could feel a prick in his eye as soon as the blade pierced the surface layer of the vegetable. there was no faint sizzling in the background as he sliced, there was no sound at all. Jimmy disliked onions entirely, but he thought maybe this would provide him with some kind of feeling. Somewhere in his programming, Jimmy never learned how to feel.

Onions made him cry. He was going to eat this one raw.

The salt dripped from his red and raw eyes and into his closed mouth as he peeled. His lips were pressed tightly in a line, and he let the water drip down his chin. He was crying. Not really crying, but rather leaking. Leaking like he had been filled all the way to the top and now there was nowhere left to go except out the crevices of his face. Maybe it wasn’t that deep. Maybe he was just leaking because of the smell coming off the onion. But he leaked. Tears were slipping behind the back of Jimmy’s eyeballs and trickling down his cheeks.

They were squeezing out the corners.

Then he began to eat, and leak, and he did this until the onion was gone and his cheeks felt tight with dried salt. Then he went to bed.

Isolation

I lie in a small single bed, staring at the ceiling. The single light flickers on and off weakly and I sit and wait.

What am I waiting for?

I am waiting for the pale and fleshy arms that have me in a chokehold to release me, and then I will get my clothes and go.

These arms belong to a creature who breathes heavily into the crook of my neck. It lies on its stomach, an arm draped over my body like a paperweight.

And I am the paper.

His unfamiliar face is pressed into the pillow. It has dark hair on its arms and on its head. I analyse the tufts in detail as they are resting closely in front of my eyes, connected to a forearm. A loose hand and red fingers drape comfortably down from an elbow.

He is a structure of flesh and bones. I am in a cage of human flesh and bones.

I feel desperately alone. All the time. Constantly. The creature and I barely spoke when we met at the pub. I don’t remember what words we exchanged, and I don’t care to remember. It’s all quite a blur.

Everywhere, the structure has me surrounded. A leg, an arm, a flaccid and unremarkable penis all trapping me in the small single bed of a dormitory room. I lie still and watch the light. I will not talk to him when he wakes up. He will not talk to me either. I have decided sex is not for me, neither is speaking, as speaking can often lead to such things.

From now on I will minimise any chance of partaking in either of these activities.

The flesh creature stirs, he mumbles something in his sleep, a croak releases from his throat and I grow excited at the thought he might wake, and I may be free. I am disappointed to find that he simply readjusts and tightens his grip on me under the covers. I wonder if when he wakes, will he still find me as beautiful as he did the night before when he was in a drunken haze?

I don’t feel pretty, I hardly even feel human most days.

But, in all my unwomanly inhumanness, I know I am, at the end of the day, superior to him. He is male after all, a hungry creature that is emotionally stunted and physically repulsive. Even the most handsome of men are disgusting if you look hard enough and the flesh creature isn’t horribly ugly, he makes me wonder how I can be attracted to such a species. Besides, I have only ever really wanted one man and he is not here. He is far away from here and he doesn’t want me.

The man I want is no flesh creature. He is made of words.

He would never make grunting noises in his sleep or claw onto me under covers. The man I want has a brain I want to claw onto and a body I want to see without clothes.

He would be a flesh palace, but he is not mine.

Eventually, I hope to stop doing everything a human would do and merge into something else. I will stop eating, moving, and eventually breathing until I transform into something else. I will stop shitting and pissing and fucking until I am something else. But I wouldn’t like to be nothing, nothing is dark black and sharp, and it makes my chest go tight when I think about it.

I would prefer anything but that. I would even prefer the flesh cage.

Maybe I could transform into a bird because I would like to fly, but a predatory bird so I would live in fear of being hunted and killed. I would be a vulture. Vultures eat meat, after all. If I was a vulture, I would be able to peck my way out of the flesh prison I am in.

I could free myself from this if I was a vulture.