I like that you let yourself be surprised

She loved her mother and depended on her mother, and yet every single word her mother said annoyed her.

Love is like war; easy to begin, hard to end.

You hold on to old experiences: injuries, injustices, and great love affairs, too. And you hold them in your joints and your organs, and wear them on your skin.

Those were the people who made her something, and without them she was different. She'd held on to them and to that old self tenaciously, though. She clung to it, celebrated it, worshipped it even, instead of constructing a new grown-up life for herself. For years she'd been eating the cold crumbs left over from a great feast, living on them as though they could last her forever.

Maybe they would look at each other and feel some odd yearning, but neither of them would know why. They would want to stop, but they would be embarrassed, and neither would know what to say. They would go their separate ways. Who knew? Maybe that happened every day to people who'd once loved each other.

To write a story, I think you really have to open yourself up to the world.