I wanted to meet the monster. Why go down if you can go up?

In my limited realm of experience, beginnings led to endings.

THE BAD THING ABOUT FEAR Is it requires a reaction. Some hide. Some cry. But, like a dog condemned to a walled yard with no hope of escape or affection, some learn to bite.

Even good girls have secrets, ones even their best friends must guess.

Now that I have opened that bottle of memories they're pouring out like wine, crimson and bittersweet.

And if candor strikes to forcefully, step back, draw careful breath, and consider the angle your words must take before you open your mouth, let them leak out. Because once you tilt the truth, it becomes a lie.

I know he did horrible things in the jungle. Things no amount of alcohol or pills could erase. War stains soldiers, all the way through their psyches, into their souls. I understand that, and could almost forgive him for taking his own life, to quiet the ghosts. But I can never forgive him for taking my mother with him.