Each person’s madwoman is different. For you, maybe she’s more like a shadow, following you around, a perpetual reminder of what you’re not; or a spindly creature lurking under the bed until you put on some jeans that feel tight or send a text you immediately wish you hadn’t sent; or, as one friend of ours put it, “a whiny, annoying brat of a six-year-old who thinks she knows everything and will not—give me strength—shut up unless I take deep breaths for her, then she goes quiet.”
