I wish I could tell you that the road to Next was clear and pretty and, finally, gentle. It was anything but. When anger came, it possessed me, bringing gut-wrenching, animalistic howls of grief and pain and humiliation, then, alternatively, hollowing my voice to an unearthly calm. The raw traumas rioted through my body and mind like a soldier fresh home from war. Which, in nearly every sense, I was.
