The stillness held.

And it was the stillness, in the end, that let me sit in that room and keep my face a door while my whole life came apart — long enough for the doors at the back to open.

Chapter 3 — An Island

I was twenty-eight, and for most of my life I had been an island.

The system teaches you to survive in spaces that were never built to hold you.

I knew group homes that smelled of bleach and boiled cabbage.