Play Nice

by Rachel Harrison

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.

THIS!

There’s the smell of smoke in my hair that reminds me of the fire, of my father burning the book, watching flames turn it to ash, to nothing. The words she wrote to me that I will never get to read.

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.

They say ignorance is bliss, and, yeah, maybe, but it’s still fucking ignorance.