Waif

by Samantha Kolesnik

I call it “The Time Before Men,” a version of myself I can never get back. I guess, you could say, some might also call it Innocence.

People didn’t care about truth; they only cared about how the lie appeared.

The older I became, the more convinced I was that no one escaped this earth unscathed by human suffering.

I was attractive when I cried and this complicated my pain.

What the man didn’t understand, though, was that I could persist for a long time without reciprocation. Masochism was my talent.

I’d wave him off or, on especially sad nights, I’d let him fuck me while trying to block the experience out of my mind. The worst part about sex with Matt was that it felt like he was doing something to me, rather than with me.

I didn’t fear him, emotionally, but I knew my body, my fucking fleshly prison, wouldn’t survive what he could do to it. If I were to call out the weakest link in team Angie, it would be my flesh and bones. My mind, my heart; they had fight.

I would also never be the type he’d, of his own volition, seek.

Even though I desperately craved affection, I also feared it. I always felt a judgment or favor trailed every hug. I worried if I let myself be held, or if I cried, I would be too much to bear. I was always more consumed with giving orgasms or letting myself be used for orgasm. It was easier that way—in many ways, less vulnerable—than crying into someone’s chest.

I contemplated how bizarre it was that life sometimes threw nights at you that changed your entire self-concept.