Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.

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You know, there's a word for big, strong men who attack women, and it's coward.

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Ingenuity requires creativity.

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We both have war inside us. Sometimes it keeps us alive. Sometimes it threatens to destroy us.

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Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.

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Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you," I say. "Controlling you is.

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Sometimes drastic change requires drastic measures.

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If I let a little of the emotion out, all of it will come out, and it will never end.

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I see a kind of thirst in her expression, the same one I saw when she told me about her brother in the back room of the tattoo parlor. Before the attack simulation I might have called it a thirst for justice, or even revenge, but now I am able to identify it as a thirst for blood. And even as it frightens me, I understand it. Which should probably frighten me even more.

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Do remember, though, that sometimes the people you oppress become mightier than you would like.

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