Ashley Winstead

Midnight Is the Darkest Hour

Lindsay

I wasn't my parents' kind of girl, not on the inside, but I wasn't anyone else's, either.

Eventually the tall, skinny pines give way to a small clearing, and in the middle is a tree that towers above the others. It reaches out with a hundred snaking arms, some of them bent low to the ground. We call it the Medusa, because long ago, Everett and I decided we would give our love to villains. We know all too easy it is to become one when you're misunderstood. Our love is a corrective measure.

But joys are few and far between in this life, so I can hardly bring myself to feel guilty.

It was amazing how embodied obedience was. Amazing how, even though sometimes I thought I hated my parents, their commandments still wormed their way so deep into my subconscious that obeying them was more muscle memory than choice. That had to be the worst kind of prison - the one whose bars were buried under your skin, invisible cages around your heart and mind.

You're the queen of walking on eggshells. That's why you've always been so quiet. But you're not walking on them with me. You feel safe enough to get mad.

Then, like a damn cracking, the grief poured out. I sank to the floor and cried so hard it felt like I was breaking myself in half. and still, I couldn't get my body to express the true fullness of my grief. I was the architect of my own misery. no amount of sobbing was equal to the pain.

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