I Guess No One Stays

Goddamn, Sometimes It Hurt To Be Free.

Alice Started To Cry. It Came With No Sound, No Shuddering, No Childlike Hysterics, Just A Soul-deep Release That Turned Into Moisture And Dripped Down Her Puffy Pink Cheeks. She Touched Her Tears, Frowning. Then She Looked Up At Julia And Whimpered Two Words Before She Fell Asleep. ‘real Hurts.’

It Was True; Always Had Been. Friendships Were Like Marriages In That Way. Routines And Patterns Were Poured Early And Hardened Like Cement.

Honestly, I Believe That The Mother-daughter Relationship Is Magical, Complex, Potentially Dangerous, Profoundly Powerful, And Deeply Transformative. To Put It Simply, All Of Us Have This Relationship, And In A Very Real Way, "none Of Us Comes Out Alive." We Are All Formed First As Daughters And Then Tested As Mothers. There's Nothing Like Motherhood To Make Us Reassess How We Were As Daughters.

One Thing I Can Tell You For Sure Is This: We Only Regret What We Don't Do In Life.