The past is a very determined ghost, haunting every chance it gets.

Big events, small, mundane moments of the day–it doesn’t matter; the past will find a way to squeeze into the present–if you let it.

She always used to say that the past is a relentless parasite in its quest, feeding off of the senses, looking for anything that will trigger a memory–forever there to complicate the present, forever there to remind us that it will always be a piece of us. I never had a clue as to what she meant, until now.

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.
Laura Miller - Butterfly Weeds

When life gives you a hundred reasons to cry, show life that you have a thousand reasons to smile.

How does it happen? At what point is she born, the baffled, wounded adult of tomorrow? Is eleven what we react to for the rest of our lives?