I have a fear of relationships,” I began. “When I love, I love easy, deep, hard, strong, and long. But I can not marry. I can not live with anyone. I can not accept gifts from anyone or let anyone close enough for intimacy.

Know what I am, so when I flirt and smile and play with you, you’ll know exactly what my intentions are. ... I can not be owned or possessed. I will stray. I always stray.

Every word I speak is with the intent to relax you, to woo you, to draw you in, to make you love me, so I can weaken you, kill you, and run. That is what I am.

My smile forever glows in my eyes and I know it. Too many men have told me this. I’m lethal.

I wear my soul in my eyes. Everything in my life primed me for the next event good or bad. Every event left me in the mental state I needed to be in to enter and maintain the next stage. If something had altered at any point along the way, then maybe I stood a chance. But it didn’t. One train wreck prepared me for the next train wreck, which only prepared me for the next train wreck until I had inevitably become what I am before you.

My mother was beautiful, but insecure, and she boosted her lack of confidence with boasting and bragging. Every story was embellished. Every truth, exaggerated. The rule with my mother is simple. Believe nothing.

Electricity is loud. Did you know? When we had power outages, the peace from the forest would seep in and blanket the house in perfect, beautiful silence.

Up there with the wind and the trees, I found me. I could slip so easily into the elements and feel them move through me. It felt like I could really fly and wanted, so badly, to jump, to try. ...There, in my glen, I was home. That is the only happiness I remember.

As a child, all I saw were the monsters