Selin Sıldıryan
There is a bear sitting across from me.
It is still and silent, a titanic mass of brown fur and sharp claws. Its eyes bore into mine, pits of torrent oblivion that suck you in and trap you within their confines. We sit. Neither of us speaks. Neither of us moves. It stares at me. I stare at it.
“We’re the same you know, you and I.” It says, finally, after a minute? An hour? A year? Time is unimportant and nonexistent here. Paws splayed out one over another in front of it, it does not move. It just speaks.
“What are you talking about?” The response, the truth, comes to me easily and sharply. “I’m nothing like you.” I pull on each of my fingers on my lap. Slowly. Anticipating.
“Oh really?” Its eyes never waver. Dark, scrutinizing, all knowing.
“Don’t sound so amused. It’s the truth.” I stare it down resolutely. It won’t get the best of me.
“Then why are you still here? Why do you still sit across from me?”
“Because—”
“Because you have nowhere else to go.”
“That’s not true.” I lean forward in a flash, almost protectively. A first spark of anger. How dare it tell me that I’m alone, when it itself is notorious for its solitude? “I have—”
“Your friends? They’re gone.” A slap in the face. That gets me to falter, the words freezing me to my core. “You drove them away yourself, don’t you remember? Bitter tongue, bitter words. Why would they stick around?” It meets me in the middle, our foreheads almost touching. “Your family? Who do you call your family? All people of circumstance, with you because they had to be, gone now that they don’t.”
“That’s—That’s not true!” My nails dig painfully into the grass underneath them, tearing at the weeds with wretched force. “I’m—”
“Alone.” Its bluntness is excruciating. Every calmly spoken word is torturous. My eyes flit down to the claws in the dirt. “You lash out at every person who comes up to you and now you have no one.”
“Shut up! I don’t lash out!” My hand rises towards it but pauses in mid air, quivering. A slip of my self control, one that makes my stomach sink even deeper. The bear, of course, catches on.
“Just look at yourself.” Its voice is poised and oh so grating. “You anger easily and attack just as fast. Why?”
“I don’t— I don’t know that!” What a pointless question to ask! “Don’t ask me questions I can’t answer!”
“Yes, you can. Here, I’ll do it for you.” It leans backwards with its hulking figure, assessing me. Judging me. “It’s your means of defense. The moment someone gets close to you, you pounce on them. Hurt them before they can hurt you, so that you’ll never have to suffer because wounded prey can’t strike you back.”
I open my mouth to speak, but nothing comes out except for a shaky breath. I can’t find anything to combat such a raw statement, one that even if I deny from the outside will still eat away at me from the inside until I wither away and rot. That can’t be true, can it? I’m not…really such a predator, am I?
“The truth is you’re not malevolent, you’re fragile and you’d rather have no one on your side than risk letting someone in and getting burned worse later down the road. Now you have no one but yourself.” A moment. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing. Loneliness means independence. Don’t you feel better doing things yourself?”
I give no answer; but then a small, grudging nod. The first thing that I actually have to admit to that it’s said today. Its own head lowers, a grin breaking out across its face and baring shards of jagged teeth.
“See? It’s better when you’re alone. It’s you against the wild, and we both know by now that you’re more than capable of taking care of yourself.”
“You don’t know me,” I grit out from between my teeth. I’m not going to let a conceited bear act like it knows the first thing about me, as if it has any right to read into who I am.
“Oh, but I do. You’re me and I’m you, I told you.”
“Stop it!” I claw towards it, the rage that’s been brewing in me ready to erupt like a volcano. “Enough of your cryptic analogies! Do I look anything like you?! Do I sound anything like you?!”
“Territorial.” It gives me a completely different answer than what I asked for, dragging its paws back towards its chest. Every draw of a claw, every wave of fur in the air drives me crazy. “Careful, too much of a good thing is bad. Don’t go getting too protective, it would be a shame for you to do yourself more harm than good.”
I’ve had enough. I can’t take it anymore.
“I don’t care what you think about me or about yourself. The truth is that you and I are nothing alike. I could never be like you.”
“Why not? Just what am I that scares you so much?”
“Oh, I’ll tell you what you are.” I stand, towering above it, I meet its gaze head on, one last time. “You’re a ruthless, filthy predator. Talk all you want about defensive this and territorial that but you’re the one with blood under your claws because all you do is hunt and kill and feed. You know nothing else, you are nothing else.”
The bear does not react.
“And you are a ticking time bomb.” It doesn’t move. It just speaks. “If you’re not careful, if you do not learn to control your instincts; then one day you will blow and only then will we not be the same because then you’ll be worse than either of us ever were and it will eat you alive.”
Neither of us speak. Neither of us move. It stares at me. I stare at it. And then I flick the dried blood out from under my nails, take a final glance at the mirror before me and walk back out into the wilderness.