I go inside my head and become that other me, the one I don’t tell anybody about. The observer. She can’t feel hunger in her belly or cramped muscles from being in a cage for days on end. She isn’t Dani. She can survive anything. Feel nothing. See what’s in front of her for exactly and only what it is. Her heart doesn’t break a little every time her mom leaves. And she holds no price too high for survival. I don’t let go of myself and seek her often because once I got stuck there and she took over and the things she did … I live in terror that one day I won’t get to be Dani again.
