Such Sharp Teeth

by Rachel Harrison

It’s a particular form of torture that I wish I were alone in, though I know I’m not. For some reason I can never fully trust my own experience. I’m always treating myself like an unreliable witness. I offer no empathy, only an endless cycle of interrogation.

We were raised by a woman who honestly believes that men are the key to happiness, no matter how many times they’ve proven otherwise.

She, like me, suspects that exhibiting a sliver of vulnerability will cause the universe to implode.

Bad things have a way of severing your life into “before” and “after.” It’s really annoying.

Having a nightmare during a nap seems particularly cruel. Regular sleep, fine. But to be betrayed by a nap? Uncool.

There’s no telling anyone. No sharing this burden. It’s mine. It’s my body.

My body answers with another heave, because I belong to it more than it belongs to me.

When you’re sad, you cry. When you’re happy, you smile, you laugh. But what do you do when you’re angry? Not just mad, but filled with this ugly, consuming rage? And the thing is, women aren’t allowed to be angry. Nobody likes a mad woman. They’re crazy, irrational, obnoxious, shrill.

The conversation she’s begging me for isn’t for my benefit; it’s for hers.

I know what this means. I know her doubt. I’m painfully familiar.

I wonder how many more times I’ll have to cut myself open for her to truly believe it.

Once you tell them, once they know, they never look at you the same.”

Scarlett isn’t the type to be unhappy in a relationship. She’s like my mother. She’ll do whatever it takes to make it work.

She followed our mother’s model, and I rejected it wholeheartedly. That’s how it’s always been.

The werewolf thing only enhances all the parts of me that were already broken and wrong. It’s trapped me with the worst of myself. It’s my reckoning.

It’s not an urge anymore. It’s a need. I drop down on all fours and go.

I’m stuck in this body. A body that’s volatile, that’s vicious, that I can’t trust.

And it just feels like it’s on me, like I’m the problem child.”

“You’re so beautiful,” he says as he kisses along my clavicle, one hand loose around my neck and the other moving up my thigh. “You’re so beautiful.” But I need him to love me ugly.

I think she’s trying to tell me that I should be grateful for my trauma because it’s somehow positively contributed to my personal development.

There’s no winning. The trauma is either your fault or it’s a gift. It’s either You should have done this to stop it or Look what good has come of it! If you don’t get over it, why can’t you get over it? Why can’t you get past it or learn how to cope? Or if you do find some way to move on with your life in a socially acceptable manner, then you’re so brave and so strong, and aren’t you amazing? Let’s applaud you for moving forward while there’s a knife at your back.

But I guess the forgiveness isn’t for her. It’s for me. Because it’s either that or taking her head off with my teeth. There’s no more in-between.

I went against my nature to seek outside help only to be met with more disbelief.

At the time it seemed like a werewolf necessity, something I had to do to manage my monstrousness, but maybe I was just filing my teeth for him. For someone who never actually gave a damn about me.

I want to. I want accountability. For once, some goddamn accountability.

I don’t understand how it’s possible to live with your heart in someone else’s hands. To have the capacity to forgive them if they break it.

Sometimes, having shared this with her, having this close history, makes being around her so easy, so freeing, like gravity doesn’t exist. And sometimes it feels like I’ve been stripped of my skin.

Mia’s wrong. People change. Some of us once a month.

It takes fucking guts to open yourself up to someone. To love someone. To hope for their love in return.

Once I stopped thinking about what my life wasn’t going to be, I started to see what it could be.

It isn’t fair that I have to live with this, but I have to live.

My strength doesn’t come from the bad things that have happened to me. It defies those things.

There is no me and the wolf. I am the wolf. This body is mine; it belongs to me. I’m here inside it, in control.

“You can’t free yourself of pain by causing pain. If you don’t take measures to control yourself, all you’ll do is cause pain. There’s no relief in destruction. I think you know that.”