But somewhere over the twelve years that followed, the mercy quietly curdled into something else, into surrender, and I never noticed the moment it changed, because from the inside they can feel identical.

Mercy is a choice you make from strength: you have the power to harm someone who wronged you, and you choose, freely, not to use it, and you could change your mind at any moment.

Surrender is what mercy becomes when you forget you ever had the choice, when protecting the people who hurt you stops being a gift you are giving and becomes simply the shape of your cage, the automatic reflex of a person who no longer believes she is allowed to do anything else.

I had started, at eighteen, by granting my family mercy.