We Do What We Do in the Dark

by Michelle Hart

“No one is thinking of you that way,” said the woman. “No one is sitting around waiting for you to be good.”

“Shame and pride often feel like the same thing. You begin to want to protect even the most embarrassing parts of your life.”

“We do not change that much from who we are as children. Who you are now is who you always have been.”

I think that when you’re miserable, you often do things that extend that misery. There is something pleasing about misery that makes it seem as though time has stopped.”

“You and I,” she said, “we do what we do in the dark and then we deal with it all alone.” She puckered her lips and blew onto her nails. “That’s how I know you won’t tell anyone about us. If you did, whatever this is would no longer be just yours.”

She thought about nothing else but how terrible she felt; there was nothing else beyond it. But there was also a pleasing insularity to her sorrow. There was something about misery that made it seem as though time had stopped.

Sometimes she suspected she had given the best of herself to the woman, as if the fire of her life had burned most intensely when she was eighteen, and she no longer had enough energy to keep rekindling it.