But that’s not how pain works… You ignore it and it just sinks down deeper. It lodges itself in the corners of our memories, hangs off tree branches on Callawassie Drive. It hides under the pews in the back row of the church. It gets caught in a pile of sheets no one knew what to do with.

but the farther away from it I was, the easier it was to ignore.

the same way parents are supposed to want their kids, kids have a genetic predisposition to want to be wanted by them.

they didn’t want me.

Death is confronting for sheltered people because it fractures realities.

Mortality is unbearably confronting, so much so that lots of people spend their whole lives trying to live as though it doesn’t chain them like it does the rest of us.

But why would I be going into shock at the loss of a parent I lost so many years ago already?

And I think to myself, wouldn’t it be so lovely if we viewed ourselves through the same lens as the people who love us?

but our subconscious is the real boss. Our conscious actions might be the ship we’re sailing, but our subconscious is the rudder that steers it.