And it made her what she is. Who she is. She can’t control that now any more than she could control it back then. But doesn’t she see that she traded one abuser for another? One monster for another? Only this time she let it happen willingly. This time she walked into that fucked-up world with her eyes wide open, and she accepted it rather than fought it. That’s not the Carrie I once knew. The Carrie I knew would fight until her fingers were raw and bloody and she was clawing to get the earth from off of her face.
She wouldn’t let herself be buried alive in a world of rot and sin.
But her circumstances made her who she was. They changed her forever. And instead of being the beautiful, carefree young woman she could have been, she ended up being a broken girl digging her way through the shit of life.
We all have our very own perhapses.
We can list them endlessly, until we run out of paper and ink and we have to carve them into wood and stone and metal, until everything turns to dust and blows away.
They never end, unless we let them. Because there is always more. But better than that, there can alwaysbemore. As long as we want it.
Carrie let hers end.
She stopped seeing them and believing in them.
She stopped believing in herself without me around.
I rotted in my prison cell, and then in the hospital, quickly turning from a boy into a man, watching my life slowly slip away. And she let go of the good things and clung onto the bad things.
Carrie was a victim, and her circumstance was life.
And mine was thinking I could ever save her.
