When I win this fucking award, I won’t even know what award they’re talking about at first. “No, I’m serious,” I’ll say. “What award?” Because I haven’t even been following the nomination process, not because I think I’m too good for it, but honestly just because this kind of thing doesn’t even register with me, like I don’t even notice when people win awards. I mean, if it makes them happy, that’s great, I just don’t even hardly notice it.

It’s not that I think I’m above this whole thing, because I don’t. I’m just in a really different place from it, a place that’s separate and slightly higher up from the place everyone else is in, but not above them.

When I win this god damn award, I’ll say things like, “I don’t even own anything formal enough to wear to this awards ceremony! I’ll have to wear hamburger wrappers and rags, I guess, because those are the nicest clothes that I own, because I never win awards or have clothes to wear while I accept them.” And it will be so refreshing, the way I win this award, which will be different from how everybody else normally wins them.

When I win this shit-helling award, people will have to explain what kind of award it is, and what exactly I won the award for. “What award did I even win,” I’ll ask, and people will laugh helplessly. “You’re impossible,” people will say to me, the award winner who is so unaffected by awards and prizes and accolades that she doesn’t even know what kind of award she won, even though it’s actually an incredibly important award.

I’ll try to run into a cave, and inside of a hollow tree inside of that cave, and even more inside of a cozy little bird’s nest inside of the hollow tree inside of that cave to get away from all my accolades, but the more lonely choices I make, the more my friends and well-wishers will insist upon following me there, because they’ll know I only want to be alone so that someone can find me. “You look so beautiful hiding in this cave,” they’ll say. “Please let us give you just this one award.”

“I didn’t even want this award,” I’ll say when they give me my award. “You should probably give this to someone who wanted it more than I do, someone who’s maybe really wrapped up in superficial things like this and who would think it was a really big deal to win this award, which I don’t think it is, no offense to the people who made this award.” And the people who made the award would get it, they would get that I didn’t mean what they did didn’t matter, just that it didn’t matter to me.

Jesus fuck, when I win this christing award, I won’t even know what to do with it, because I’ve never even thought about awards before. Do I hold it with my elbows, or…? I’ll fall over onto the floor, because I didn’t take the weight of the award into account when I tried to shift my center of gravity, probably.

After this first award, I’ll probably win a whole fucking boatload of more awards for the same thing. Colleagues in my field, whatever it is, will start to rib me good-naturedly at all the ceremonies, which I didn’t even want to come to and am still wearing hamburger rags at because I forgot to buy formal wear. They’ll say things like “why even bother to read the card” and “we all know you are going to win this fucking award” but they won’t really be angry or even jealous because they all know how much I deserved this award and that they’ll have their own turn at other awards, maybe not quite as good as the award I am getting now but it doesn’t even matter because they would never even consider themselves as being in the same category as me when it comes to awards, in the future.

Honestly, if anything, once I win my award, people will say things to each other (not to me) like “Wow, had she really not won an award before this?” and “I can’t believe this is her first award, like maybe they gave it to her honestly a little late because she should have had another award or maybe two awards a while back,” and “I’m so glad she has this award now. She never even mentioned not having an award before, because I guess she just didn’t care about having one.”

I honestly don’t even know what award you’re talking about? I’ve never even won an award, I don’t think. Are you thinking of somebody else?