Fallout

Anger is a valid emotion. It's only bad when it takes control and makes you do things you don't want to do.

Forgiveness isn’t my best thing. Easier staying pissed. But I’m tired of being pissed all the time. Tired of feeling hurt by stuff that can never be fixed because it is an indelible part of the past.

Falling in love with someone is the surest highway to hurt that I know. When the door to love opens, the window to control closes.

Puzzle pieces don't always connect do they?

This is unstoppable, no holds barred. This is beautiful. Crazy. A beginning. Betrayal. Addictive. Aggressive. Alive. This is something to be afraid of.

Clear. Cold. Empty. Like how I feel right now. Love is strange. One minute you’re jungle fever. The next you’re Artic winter.

It's just so hard to feel good, you know?" I do know. And more than that, it's just so incredibly hard to feel. (54)

Love is like that. I could crush her beneath the weight of confession.

Innocence eroded into nightmare. All because of very bad touch. Love, corrupted.

My body Healed quickly. But the wound to my psyche was deep. Wide. First aid, too little, too late, left me hemorrhaging inside, the blood unstaunched by psychological bandage or love's healing magic. Eventually it scabbed over, a thick, ugly welt of memory. I work to conceal it, but no matter how hard I try, once in a while something makes me pick at it until the scarring bleeds. In my arms, Ashante cries, innocence ripped apart by circumstance. Bloodied by inhuman will. Time will prove a tourniquet. But she will always be at risk of infection. (124)

I've Got A Little Problem And I'm not really sure how to fix it. Not really sure I need to. Not really sure I could. Life is pretty good. But once in a while, uninvited and uninitiated anger invades me. It starts, a tiny gnaw at the back of my brain. Like a migraine except without pain. They say headaches blossom, but this isn't so much a blooming as a bleeding. Irritation bleeds into rage, seethes into fury. An ulcer, emptying hatred inside me. And I don't know why. Life is pretty good. So, what the hell?

The only thing about myself I know for sure is that I don't know anything.

Certain of misfire, my heart threatens to stop.

Possibilities ...in the closet ...itching ...to break out ...but afraid of ...the fallout

Always before, I just said no, left it solidly there. I waver now. I want to share everything with him. Want to know what he knows, feel what he feels, share the same space he's in.

So You Want to Know All about her. Who she really is. (Was?) Why she swerved off the high road. Hard left to nowhere, recklessly indifferent to me. Hunter Seth Haskins, her firstborn son. I've been chocking that down for nineteen years. Why did she go on her mindless way, leaving me spinning in a whirlwind of her dust?

I need to capture my sprite with trembling hands. Except I could crush her. Wonder how many small things of beauty - flowers, seashells, dragonflies - have met such a demise. Wonder how much fragile love has collapsed beneath the weight of confession.

...Things happened when you were little. Things you don't remember now, and don't want to. But they need to escape, need to worm their way out of that dark place in your brain where you keep them stashed.

...I think the more she has failed at things like relationships and parenting, the more she has cut herself off from feeling bad about those things. And if you don't let yourself feel bad, sooner or later you stop feeling good, too. You insulate yourself. Build up layers, like stacking paper, everything growing heavier. And when the weight becomes too much, those layers compress. Become hard. Sad, really, to think that Kristina has turned herself into cardboard.

The portal to pain is caring too deeply about anyone.

Love is strange. One minute you're jungle fever. The next you're Arctic winter.

I might have been your zygote. Your fetus. Maybe even your off-spring. But I have never been your son. You have no idea what it means to be a real mother. You think nine months of discomfort and eight hours of labor gives you the right to call yourself 'Mom'? Well, bitch, you're delusional.

Aunt Cora says it's my aura. "I see them, you know. Yours is dark. Sort of like black coffee, although it fluctuates. Sometimes there are little flecks of gold. If you could make those coalesce, turn your aura more toffee than coffee, things would be different.

They say, when facing the onslaught of tooth and claw, a creature's heart can simply quit.

No, Home is somewhere else, I don't know if it's a place I've already been, or one I've yet to find. But I'm pretty sure the answer is tangled up in Where I Came From.