skin of a wolf

Trigger warning: This story contains discussions of domestic violence and sexual assault

He first goes to therapy when he's twenty six, the quiet mutterings about how much he hated himself before he got raped -- how much more he hated himself after -- growing too loud to remain ignorable, too casual in conversation to avoid that stare that people give him when they heard him mutter it the first time. Once a week, he sits in an overstuffed armchair and spends an hour complaining to a lady with wiry glasses and thinning, grey hair, and her hideous overalls, and -- he calls it complaining because that's what it is, really. An hour of him being miserable, (which he actually pays for, for some reason,) and invariably comes out of it all feeling twice as pathetic as when he went in. 

So when she tells him he needs validation, his response had been a snarky yeah, fucking obviously, Paula. It’s a blatant attempt to brush off the fact that she’s right, and it isn't fooling either of them at this point, a little notch forming between her eyebrows as he'd said it. She’d given him that disapproving frown, the same she reserves for whenever he says anything crass or self deprecating, and then handed him a pamphlet off her desk anyways.

There had been a group support meeting. He’d gone after putting it off for three weeks, sat in one of those uncomfortable metal fold-out chairs in the basement of a church and listened as eight different women went around the circle first, talking about the horrible things they’ve each been through. 

There’d been a girl who’d been blindfolded and shoved into the back of a truck, a postal worker whose husband had beaten her for years and years and years, a college student who had gone to a frat party and had been told well it's your fault, really by the judge when, by some miracle, she actually got a trial -- at some point the stories blend into each other, and all he hears are his own thoughts, his own memories, ringing angrily in his ears. They talk, and talk, and the entire time his jaw is wired shut, lips firm as he forces himself to stay quiet. The words what the fuck are you doing here, act like a man, drifted across his mind idly at some point, and he'd folded his arms over his chest, squeezed tightly in response, hyperaware each time a stray set of eyes lingered over him for too long.

When the speaker on his left finished her story, he felt as every person's attention in the cramped room shifted to him, waiting for him to say something. He’d been staring straight back into the eyes of the lady who had been running the discussion, and he'd felt like he was a frog under a microscope, being picked open to be prodded at --

“Would you like to share?” she asks. The words are gentle enough, soft around the edges, and he'd blinked twice. The heat of the dozen-or-so other people watching had burned through his entire body, face flushed in shame.

He'd shaken his head no.

She'd nodded, as if she understood, as though he might actually have belonged there, and he'd felt like a piece of shit, like an ugly, piece of shit who’s just inserting himself into a space that’s not for him -- and then, just as suddenly, the eyes fall off him as the next person started talking, his lungs expanding in relief.

Afterwards, while the other women are all hugging each other goodbye, he stands in the corner alone, an awkward distance away from everyone else. They're all too distracted to notice when he hobbled his way to the bathroom, thrown open the stall door and puked his guts out into the toilet until there had been nothing left, had shaken silently on the cold square tiles and cried into his hands.

One of them, -- the lady who’d run the meeting, he realizes, recognizing her, -- is still there when he finally leaves. He'd scraped himself off the floor almost twenty minutes later, taken the time to rinse his mouth out in the sink, and yet she’s still there, patiently standing in the doorway that leads out to the parking lot as though she’d been waiting for him. His stomach roils as he steps up, watches her stare out into space, desperate to go unnoticed as he wonders if he could slip past.

But she's already turned around and locked onto him like a hawk before he gets the chance to try, quietly drifts her way over to the square of carpet where he’s standing, places her hand on his shoulder and says,

“Some people get over it. They come once or twice, go to therapy maybe, cry on their friend’s shoulders, and then they get over it. In a few months, a year or two. Whatever.” Her hair is the colour of wet clay, off-red where the dying sun catches it, cheeks dotted with freckles that splinter where her skin cracks. She isn't that pretty, not really, but something about her is bright. 

His heart hardens to stone in his chest, legs frozen as she smiles sadly. “But some of us, it never really goes away. Sometimes you leave it at home, and sometimes you have to pick it up and carry it with you, but it’s always there. People are just different sometimes and if it hurts bad, it hurts -- bad. There’s no problem in acknowledging that.”

She smiles, squeezes his shoulder again, and he’s certain that if his stomach weren’t already completely empty, he would have vomited on the spot. Across the parking lot, a cardinal lands on the gutter that runs along the church roof, and he wishes quietly to himself that he were dead, that he were less of a mess, that he actually knew how to respond to this kind of conversation rather than break down into this idiot who can’t even talk --

“You’re always welcome to come again.” She hesitates, the mask shifting for a second, just long enough to recognize the profound sadness underneath, and she tacks on, “If you'd like to come again. It gets easier, with time."

There’s a few seconds where they just stand there, her hand on his shoulder as he watches the bird flutter to and fro. He can feel her waiting for him to respond. He knows she’s waiting for him to respond. His insides churn.

It takes him a long moment, an agonizing cluster of seconds, before he manages to calm himself down enough to part his lips against the cacophony of voices telling him that he's a piece of shit, that these people all have it worse than him, that's he's a disgusting, whiny, ungrateful man who deserves to die for forcing his way into a space that’s meant to be safe, and something inside him breaks in two.

"How could it ever get easier?"