Play Nice

by Rachel Harrison

I wonder if love can be ugly. If it can do the wrong thing. Bad things. I wonder if it can ever really die.

But so often, being right means nothing but winning a round of a losing game.

Men are never selfish. They’re smart. Women are always selfish. You want to be single? Selfish. You’re a wife and mother and do anything other than dote on your husband and children? Selfish. I want you and your sisters to learn to take that word as a compliment. Anyone who says that to you is trying to discourage you from doing what you want. That’s how you know you’re doing something right.

It just makes me wonder about belief and delusion. What’s the difference there, really? Maybe delusion is an eagerness to believe. A desperation for it.

In the eyes of the Catholic Church, all women are sinners. We invented the enterprise, after all. Eve plucked the fruit from the tree.

What does he want me to say? Does he expect me to apologize? Everyone in my life wants me to behave in a very specific way that’s beneficial to them, and as soon as I deviate from their expectations, it’s an issue. As soon as I act out of whatever role they cast me in in their lives, it’s somehow my fault.

But I have no regrets, because I know now that she wasn’t crazy. I’m not sure anyone is. I think it’s just easier to call someone crazy than it is to admit that they could be right. Easier to call someone crazy than to confront the nuance of their circumstance, than to accept the callous cruelty that exists in the world we live in, the evil out there that revels in our suffering.