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.
We can’t be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can’t be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.
To me, when someone wrongs you, you both share the burden of that wrongdoing—the pain of it weighs on both of you. Forgiveness, then, means choosing to bear the full weight all by yourself.
I also don’t believe that whatever comes after life depends on my correctly reciting a list of my transgressions…I don’t believe that what comes after depends on anything I do at all.
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.
Sometimes, all it takes to save people from a terrible fate is one person willing to do something about it. Even if that “something” is a fake bathroom break.
