I Can Be A Little Ocd When

You Couldn't Give Up You For Them. But What If You Wanted Them More Than You Wanted A Singular Powerful You?

We Women Make Choices For Others, Not For Ourselves, And When We Are Mothers, We...bear What We Must For Our Children. You Will Protect Them. It Will Hurt You; It Will Hurt Them. Your Job Is To Hide That Your Heart Is Breaking And Do What They Need You To Do.

She Still Felt Shell-shocked By All Of It, Numb. Beneath The Numbness, Though, Was A Raw And Terrible Anger That Was Unlike Anything She'd Felt Before. She Had So Little Experience With Genuine Anger That It Scared Her. She Actually Worried That If She Started Screaming, She'd Never Stop.

...this Fear Was Unbearable. It Unwrapped Who She Was, As Neatly As He'd Unwound Her Bandage, Leaving Too Much Pain And Ugliness Exposed. Nerve Endings; He'd Said They Were The Problem [causing Phantom Pain In The Amputated Limb]." Things That Cut Off, That Ended Abruptly Or Died--like Parents And Marriages--kept Hurting Forever.

He Was Afraid That The Secrets She'd Kept Would Always Be Here, Inside Him, An Ugly Malignant Thing Lodged Near Enough To His Heart To Upset Its Rhythm, And Though It Could Be Removed, Cut Out, There Would Always Be Scars; Bits And Pieces Of It Would Remain In His Blood, Making It Wrong Somehow, So That If He Accidentally Sliced His Skin Open, His Blood Would--for One Heartbeat--flow As Black As India Ink Before It Remembered That It Should Be Red.