Status Updates From Not of This Brood

"When my time comes, I’ll die regretting."

"There was a gentleness to them—I knew it—a kind of old-world care, but it came tangled with a generational blind spot, with an inability to respect boundaries, as if their affection excused intrusion."

"We like to believe we are in control, but we are not. Not really. Most of our lives are shaped by choices we never got to make, leaving us to take what remains and then mold it into something bearable."

"I often wondered how other people managed to face life without chemical armor, without something to soothe it. How did he? What tricks did they all have that I didn’t? Was their life more… tolerable? Were their burdens lighter?"