Every Single Secret

by Emily Carpenter

There are monsters all around us—people who have to hide because the world can’t bear to see them for who they truly are.

Suddenly, the reptilian section of my brain kicks into gear, and I realize with a jolt that I can feel my blood pulsing through my veins, infusing every inch of my body with life.

If the system had taught me one thing, it was that acting tough was a perfectly good substitute for actually being tough.

That the past was like the surface of a crazy mirror. When you spoke certain things aloud, when they left your mouth, they changed. The words became either oddly magnified—blown out of proportion—or squeezed down to nothing. Right could appear wrong, good could look like evil, depending on the spin. No one talked about their past without things getting distorted—and without consequences. There were always consequences.

All those times I was charging around the track like a lunatic, I never considered the way fear could fill a person, weigh them down. I never knew fear had actual mass.

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.”

Our minds were tricky things, manipulators of time and space, coloring events with our personal palette of rage, fear, or desire.