The secret that had started as a shield became a wall, and the wall that kept my family out began, also, to keep me in.

Because as long as I kept Julian hidden, I was still, in some fundamental way, organizing my life around my family’s judgment — still letting their opinion be the thing I structured my happiness to avoid, still granting them, by my very secrecy, the power to be the audience I was hiding from.

A secret you keep out of love can quietly become a secret you keep out of fear, and fear, even well-founded fear, is a leash.

I was free of my family’s approval, but I was not yet free of their disapproval, because I was still arranging my whole life to dodge it.