Waif

by Samantha Kolesnik

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.

“Most monsters are just people the heroes abused.

“After a time, you start to get real comfortable with the idea you’re mortal. Too comfortable. That’s when you know you can really fuck up the world, when you’ve gotten used to the idea that you’re going to die anyway.”

The only parts left of her were in me. So, I realized with grim acceptance, I found novel ways to harm myself and to hurt the parts of me that were her and the parts of me that were not her.

I didn’t just hate men. I didn’t just hate the world. I hated myself.

I wanted to purge it all up, spew it back to whence it came, with no excuses and no remorse. I’d then draw a picture of myself, or take a photograph, and leave it for the next generation. Here was Woman. One of them, at least.

I was so good at running away, at disappearing, at becoming someone new. Sometimes, I thought it was my only talent.

just another dope of a man who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to the woman he was fucking beyond the rhythm of her tits.

It was a soft, tender, and beautiful space of my flesh I really loved. It was a part of my body I could look at in the mirror and touch lightly and feel instantly feminine.

It wasn’t the words themselves that felt like needles pricking into our ears, it was the disgusted tone with which my mother uttered the question.

“Mom, who gives a fuck if it’s a gay movie?” I shrieked, and my mother, so good at being the victim, crumpled.

She took to organizing the pans in her kitchenette with focused deliberation, the way she always absorbed herself in domestic tasks when she was avoiding a feeling.

I always suspected my inability to admit publicly that I loved her would lead to disaster.

The secrecy of our relationship bubbled to the surface insidiously and reminded us constantly we somehow were less-than, and only because of me.

Because I couldn’t bear to esteem my love for her enough. There was some sad part of me, lodged deep in my gut, that felt I had to be with a man. I couldn’t articulate why, and ...

There seemed to be some unknown force goading me toward men with neon letters han...

“I don’t know how to be with you,” I said, and I meant it. “That’s because they’ve beaten it out of you. The knowing.”

The sensation of finding out my ex-girlfriend died was, at first, like falling. My stomach felt like it was in free-fall and I waited for something or someone to catch me.

JFC, sadly I know this experience intimately and I’m gutted.

I worried I had caused her so much emotional pain, it had manifested and eaten her alive.

I decided that day I wasn’t good enough for women, and I went out to the bars that night looking to hurt myself with the nearest man,

I know it’s not rational. Does grie...

It felt to me like we were all outcasts joined together by one common gene undiscovered by scientists.

We had to go seeking and searching, lifting up every rock, to find each other. We were our own family.

Reena laughed then, and it was beautiful, like a spontaneous burst of original music that would only be heard once, a laugh borne of old pain turned sweet.

Family was chosen. The rest could go to Hell.