This is the paradox no one tells you: the thing that keeps you captive to people who hurt you is not your hatred of them.

It is your love, or the hope that wears love’s face.

And you do not get free by hating them more.

You get free by hoping less — by grievingly setting down the belief that they will ever be different, and discovering, in the terrible lightness that follows, that the door was never locked.

It was only held shut by your own hand, holding on.

Chapter 15 — Valedictorian