I don’t know about skincare so I have bad skin. I can’t cook dinner so I get it at The Pizza Shack. I hooked up with a guy who used to work there. His name was Louis, and every day he laughed at me for ordering a personal with no cheese. One day he laughed so hard that tears spilled from his eyes. I followed him to the back room and licked them away. The next day he got into a near-fatal car crash. His former coworkers told me a secret: he’d undergone facial reconstruction surgery. “His new face,” they said, “doesn’t look like his old face.” I wondered if he erased himself to avoid me.

I wondered if every man in town was Louis. I wondered if every car in town was the one that almost killed him. I wondered what I would have done in his place. I wondered what it would feel like to have the side door of my car ripped off—and then, lost in thought at the intersection of First and Bailey, I found out.

My face was intact, but my arm was broken. I was sent to a hospital known for being the worst in the state. I hoped it would be bad in an exciting way, with strange bugs in the corners and doctors who tried to sleep with me. My doctor was hot but he didn’t laugh when I asked him to sign my cast. The trash can in my room was overflowing with Pizza Hut boxes.

The Pizza Shack is like Pizza Hut but worse. I am like Louis but worse. I got into a car crash and couldn’t even manage to reinvent myself through it. After a long legal battle, I only scored $2000 for my trauma. $2000 can buy me a trip to Europe, a designer gown, a month of rent in a complex with a nice gym. It cannot buy me the ability to cook or the ability to care.

I was voted “Best Smile” in my senior year of high school. In college, I chained myself to a tree so it wouldn’t be cut down. It turned out I had the wrong tree, a tree nobody wanted to chop in the first place. The journalists still came.

I didn’t lead with this because I thought it wouldn’t be interesting. I thought my sadness would seem more important. Someday I may learn to love myself beyond pity. But today is not that day.