Zulema Renee Summerfield

“It is 1988 and America is full of broken homes. America's time is measured in every-other-weekend-and-sometimes-once-a-week. Her drawers are filled with court papers and photos no one looks at anymore. Her children have bags that're always packed and waiting by the door.”
― Zulema Renee Summerfield, Every Other Weekend

“The thing about fear that no one tells you is that it's like the cup in the myth of Thor: you can drink and drink and you will never be done. Fastidiously, steadily, without consciousness, you can devote everything you have to being afraid. Through dedication-- or mere habit, really-- fear becomes as hardwired within you as the length of your scrawny limbs or the color of your turd-brown eyes. Fear doesn't define you, fear /is/ you: your breath, your eyes, your ears, your mouth. /You/ are the house ablaze. You are the earth being torn apart. You are the masked men, their hunger, their rage. You are the vacant eyes of what really happened in Vietnam.

Until something real happens. When something real happens, you're not even afraid anymore. Brittle, maybe, or a little coarse. Fear leaves and a kind of anger settles in its place. And you know what? There was never any point! The sleepless nights, the churning in your gut, the gnawed-down fingernails-- what a waste! Because the most frightening thing possible will never even occur to you. If anything, /that's/ what's you should fear. That you will never, ever anticipate the thing you should have feared the most.”
― Zulema Renee Summerfield, Every Other Weekend