Someone Told Me I'd Be Good at Radio Once
Katie Comfort
It's because I used to be able to fooling people into thinking I had a passionate voice.
But lately,
my voice just feels flat.
Like any air I had in my lungs that inflated what I said
got let out.
Like I've let it out.
What's scary about this is that passion is pretty much the only word I would use to define myself.
Passion drives me.
God made me passionate.
I get passionate about most things (like doughnuts, and injustice, and feminism, and Palestine, and boots)
but now anytime I have to talk about that
it feels routine.
Like when radio announcers have to do plugs for brands of businesses that sponsor them,
And you can tell that the announcer really does like the hair salon he goes to, but he's so tired of
telling people that he just wants to be quiet.
I'm in that boat.
I feel like a regurgitated sound track
Like the last stop of a stand-up-comedy-world-tour.
(There is no way those jokes feel funny 100 stops later).
Right?
What's scary about feeling like a slightly dilapidated balloon,
is that this is a lack of buoyancy is not something I have ever felt.
It isn't empty, I have felt empty.
It just feels like there's something that used to help intensify this passion which I suppressed or
internalized in some weird, unconscious way. It feels like I'm protecting myself from the failure
that I feel is inevitable with graduation looming around the corner.
It feels like my whole life is two baggy, sleep deprived eyes. And like there is no way I could ever
pretend that I could do radio announcements anymore.
I don't know how to tend to this decaying space.
I don't know how to rejuvinate.
I feel helpless.
Like a radio announcer who has lost her voice.