I'll Tell You The Secret.

I Want Hard Stories, I Demand Them From Myself. Hard Stories Are Worth The Difficulty. It Seems To Me The Only Way I Have Forgiven Anything, Understood Anything, Is Through That Process Of Opening Up To My Own Terror And Pain And Reexamining It, Re-creating It In The Story, And Making It Something Different, Making It Meaningful - Even If The Meaning Is Only In The Act Of The Telling.

... Survival Is The Least Of My Desires.

For Years And Years, I Convinced Myself That I Was Unbreakable, An Animal With An Animal Strength Or Something Not Human At All. Me, I Told People, I Take Damage Like A Wall, A Brick Wall That Never Falls Down, Never Feels Anything, Never Flinches Or Remembers. I Am One Woman But I Carry In My Body All The Stories I Have Ever Been Told, Women I Have Known, Women Who Have Taken Damage Until They Tell Themselves They Can Feel No Pain At All.

Women Lose Their Lives Not Knowing They Can Do Something Different. Men Eat Themselves Up Believing They Have To Be The Thing They Have Been Made. Children Go Crazy. Really, Even Children Go Crazy, Believing The Shape Of The Life They Must Live Is As Small And Mean And Broken As They Are Told.

Things Come Apart So Easily When They Have Been Held Together With Lies.