Cackle

by Rachel Harrison

“And if we’re just friends, if we see what it’s like to just be friends, we’ll know,” he said. “We’ll know either way, right?” I couldn’t stand the embarrassment of arguing. I couldn’t bring myself to beg for him to want me, to love me the way that I loved him. And I couldn’t risk losing him altogether. I had to keep him in my life, even if it was just as a friend. He was my world. I needed him. I still do.

Oof so real

It’s so easy to adjust when you’re newly in love, when you’re all gooey, soft and malleable as an infant’s skull. You make so much space in your life and in your heart, and when the person you love leaves, you’re all stretched out. There’s so much room inside me that I don’t know what to do with, space I don’t know how to fill. I’ve been waiting for it to shrivel up, for me to take my former shape, to be how I was before I met him, but it’s not happening.

An experience I would've never been able to articulate :')

All I can think about is how sad I am and how I can’t escape the sadness because I feel it. It’s coursing through my body with the swift ruthlessness of the flu. I can barely hold the steering wheel. I don’t have the strength.

Narratives change when someone dies, especially young and tragically. Their history transforms. It transcends reality, into something more romantic.

THIS!!!

I’d forgotten the difference between choosing not to participate and being excluded.

I was bullied for this for the entirety of my youth. Not in the relentless way that required adult intervention, but enough to instill insecurity, to fuse it to my bones so it’s part of me I can never be rid of.

I wonder if everyone has this, experiences this constant loop of past shame and humiliation, both large and small, replaying over and over again or sometimes popping up randomly when least expected, like in the middle of spin class or while caramelizing onions.

It must be exhausting to be in your head, Sam told me once.

You have no idea, sam!

I think what he must have meant was, it was exhausting for him to hear about it. I exhausted him.

Girrrlll why are we like this

When we broke up, he said that our spark had fizzled. I must not be sparkly enough. I must be pretty dull.

Only animals have eyes like that. Innocent voids. I’ve held a baby before; as soon as we’re born, our eyes are filled with want.

Now girl get a grip.

“You’re welcome, sweetheart,” she says. “Be sure to tell Sophie I say hello. Tell her I gave you some jam.”

Hello major red flag

“Would hate to disappoint you.”

Annie, you in danger girl

The way people react to her . . . is there something I’m missing? Or is she just so beautiful that people don’t know what to do with themselves when they’re around her?

No girl they are scared. Somebody get this girl some awareness

“you’ll discover for yourself soon enough the things that devastate us most in the moment are always the things we look back on with such gratitude.”

I hate this sentiment and everyone who believes it

And she’s so nice and open and warm and funny.

Aka evil

I thought it would be funny, because he would expect to find a scared little girl screaming her head off, but instead it’d be me, sighing, pulling down the collar of my pajama top for easier access to my carotid artery. Hello, sir. Would you kindly put me out of my misery?

Hahaha this is so me coded

“Yeah. But why do the things that make us better always have to suck so much? Can’t there be a route to self-improvement with—I don’t know—rainbows and cupcakes and, like, sitting on the couch?” She laughs. “I think so! I believe it’s possible.” “Good,” I say. “Sign me up for that.”

“I’m never going to advocate looking for a romantic partner, especially not a male partner,” she says, and pauses to shudder. “I don’t much care for men. Or romance. I think both are a waste of time. And I’m someone with a lot of time.”

“Fate is just another invention to trick us into complacency. Inaction. If one assumes that they cannot change their circumstances, they won’t try. When you think about it, really, there’s a myriad of ways we’re conditioned to passivity. Women, especially.

I should just live like this. Abandon my ablutions. Let my teeth go yellow with rot, gums red and receding. Allow my skin to break out, forget exfoliation. Let the dead flakes congregate, create societies of zits on my face. Evil empires. I should let my hair gnarl together. Form a giant nestlike mass on top of my head. I could keep things in there. Credit cards. Snacks. I should develop a smell so terrible that no one will ever come near me. Create a force field of stink. Wouldn’t that be easier? To be left alone in my misery. To lean into what I feel, match my exterior to my interior.

I’m not brave enough to be who I am.

How is it that when trying to climb out of a hole, I always seem to dig myself deeper?

I look at her now, dancing around to Blackout-era Britney Spears, and all I feel is an overwhelming love for her.

“All these songs are about sex,” Sophie says. “Why is society so obsessed with sex?” I shrug. “If this singer is truly seeking a partner, someone should tell her good conversation is much harder to have than good sex. That should be her primary concern.”

This is the most successful writing of a character that i genuinely love and hate But the love really takes the w tbh

“Some men are so foul you wouldn’t even bother to save their blood,”

“I feel worse for the rats, though.”

“Rats are selfish creatures,” she says. “They want to survive, and they do whatever they can to survive. I admire them.”

It’s astonishing what you’ll accept when you want love. When you need it. You’ll welcome it in any form, from anyone, anything, regardless of circumstance, however peculiar. However fantastical.

“I don’t smile when I don’t feel like smiling. I don’t pretend. I’m entirely honest about who I am. Is that my great offense? Or maybe it’s that I live alone in the woods. And what’s more damning: that I live in the seclusion of the trees or that I live alone? Or that I’m happy about it all? That I’ve made these choices, that I have these gifts, and I embrace them? I’m not ashamed of who I am. Of what I am. What is it about a woman in full control of herself that is so utterly frightening? Can you tell me, Annie?”

“Forgive me for not being forthcoming with my trauma,” she says, her voice reaching a morbid pitch. “Forgive me for thinking that I might spare you from hearing all the gruesome details.”

I wonder how much of a woman’s life is spent this way. Enduring. Waiting for enjoyment or, fuck it, death.

“I gave you so much of myself,” I say, “and you wasted me.” His face. Such pure, exquisite horror. Such fear. I don’t mind. He fears me because he is small. I will not meet him there. I will not shrink myself down to his size, or anyone else’s, for their comfort. For their appeasement. I actually find it kind of amusing, his fear. Kind of funny. It’s making me laugh. I laugh.

“Women are out there tethering themselves to mediocre men just so they can wear a ball gown. It’s a shame.”

It’s best not to be specific with wishes. Otherwise, you end up getting what you think you want instead of what you really need. How dangerous.