My Mother Screamed That I Had an Iceberg Where My Soul Should Be and Slammed the Door Hard Enough to Rattle the Photos — I Stood There Waiting for the Guilt That Always Came, and for the First Time in Thirty-Two Years, It Never Did

But standing there with Iris screaming against my chest, I finally understood that the fatal storm was a thing my mother had installed in my head, not a fact about the world.

Her anger could not actually kill me.

It could only do what I let it do.

And I was, at last, done letting it do anything at all.

The words were out of me and into the room, and the cliff I had feared my whole life turned out to have solid ground a single step below its edge.

Chapter 8 — The Landlord

Diane stood frozen, her pointing finger still hanging in the air like a compass that had lost its north.