It will be difficult to break the habits of thinking Abnegation instilled in me, like tugging a single thread from a complex work of embroidery. But I will find new habits, new thoughts, new rules. I will become something else.
Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.
What is it with you today?” says Christina on the way to breakfast. Her eyes are still swollen from sleep and her tangled hair forms a fuzzy halo around her face.
I feel like what I have become is halfway between my mother and my father, violent and impulsive and desperate and afraid. I feel like I have lost control of what I have become.
I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten.
It reminds me that no embrace will ever feel the same again, because no one will ever be like her again, because she’s gone. She’s gone, and crying feels so useless, so stupid, but it’s all I can do.
To live factionless Is not just to live in poverty and discomfort; it is to live divorced from society, separated from the most important thing in life: community.
I gasp, pressing both palms to my chest. Now the monstrous thing has its claws around my throat, squeezing my airway. I twist and put my head between my knees, breathing until the strangled feeling leaves me.
I have never been carried around by a large boy, or laughed until my stomach hurt at the dinner table, or listened to the clamor of a hundred people all talking at once. Peace is restrained; this is free.
