Once There Were Wolves

by Charlotte McConaghy

Mirror-touch synesthesia. My brain re-creates the sensory experiences of living creatures, of all people and even sometimes animals; if I see it I feel it, and for just a moment I am them, we are one and their pain or pleasure is my own. It can seem like magic and for a long time I thought it was, but really it’s not so far removed from how other brains behave: the physiological response to witnessing someone’s pain is a cringe, a recoil, a wince. We are hardwired for empathy.

“There’s no love between Six and Nine yet,” I say. “But they haven’t killed each other, either.” The words fall so casually from my mouth that I am startled. Is that the way of all love? That it should carry the risk of death?

because people harm each other. I see it every day. You need to start protecting yourself. I’ll cut myself until you don’t feel it anymore.” And so she did.

There are languages without words and violence is one of them.

“I’m not minimizing. It’s just that if you paint a picture of him as a monster then you make him mythical, but men who hurt women are just men. They’re all of us. Too fucking many of us and all too human. And the women they hurt aren’t passive victims, or Freud’s masochists who like to be punished either. They’re all women, and all they’re doing, minute by minute, is strategizing how best to survive the man they loved, and that’s not a thing anyone should have to do.”

No one can meet your trust if you don’t offer it.