Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

never considered the way fear could fill a person, weigh them down. I never knew fear had actual mass.

“You understand, don’t you,” he said gently, “that sometimes people hide certain facets of who they are, who they were, from the people they love? Not because they’re willfully trying to hurt them, but simply because they’re deeply, deeply afraid that the one person they care about most may reject them.”

“You do this—you embrace the darkness, the treasure of the shadow—until the lines between you and it dissolve and it becomes an ally. Perhaps even an asset.”