Sometimes I think I won't ever feel safe until I can count my last days on one hand.

The worst feeling: when you just have to wait and prepare yourself for the lie.

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.

I often don't say things out loud, even when I should. I contain and compartmentalize to a disturbing degree: In my belly-basement are hundreds of bottles of rage, despair, fear, but you'd never guess from looking at me.

There's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink.

I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.

I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.