Hungerstone

by Kat Dunn

To be a woman is a horror I can little comprehend.

The blood that came each month after. At first, a disappointment, then a fear, then a grief, then an inevitability. I was good for nothing but blood.

for a few weeks, it is enough for me to be only what I am.

My body is my enemy, and I will use every weapon in my arsenal against it.

There are perhaps some graces to being unmothered. My body is as unused as a dress not yet worn, and so remains as crisp and fresh as the day it was bought.

This was my induction into a motherless world, alone and met with fear and horror.

For a decade, I have carried the burden of his secret, and now he brings another hunting party to our door.

I thought marriage freedom when I sought it; I thought it safety. But sometimes, when my control slips, I think there is only safety and certainty in death.

“Disappointment tells us what we truly wanted. And to want is to be alive.”

I found it powerful to want nothing: for then I could never be disappointed.

Because to want is to risk disappointment. And life has so bitterly disappointed me.

“Oh, little Lenore. It is terrible to be alive. But it is worse to be dead to ourselves.”

How frightening it would be to die, but how great a relief to sleep forever.

I am a horror.

I am a woman woken from thirty years slumber, and I would eat the world should it satisfy this empty, keening void where my heart should be.

A friendless child in a friendless world makes life a job of survival.

I cannot master the world and hope to fix everything in its place. This cannot bring fulfillment. All we can hope for in life is to know one’s own desires in order to be able to act on them. To want is to surrender to uncertainty. To step into the unknown. To expose ourselves to all possible outcomes and trust we will not be destroyed by disappointment.