Taylor-+Significant+Passage

//Significant Passage… //  “Then, I’d still thought everything I felt about that night – the shame, the fear – would fade in time, healing like a onetime gash to a single, barely noticeable scar. But that hadn’t happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however, stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real. That was the thing: Once, the difference between light and dark had been basic. One was good, one bad. Suddenly, though, things weren’t so clear. The dark was still a mystery, something hidden, something to be scared of, but I’d come to fear the light, too. It was where everything was revealed, or seemed to be. Eyes closed, I saw only the blackness, reminding me of this one thing, the most deep of my secrets; eyes open, there was only the world that didn’t know it, bright, inescapable, and somehow, still there.” –pages 273-274 

I chose this passage because it explains what Annabel is going through, and why she never told anyone what really happened. She thought that, over time, she would forget about what happened and start to feel normal again, but in reality her memory only grew stronger as time passed. Her memories started to keep her from being happy. What had happened was always there, in the back of her mind, haunting her.  Also, the metaphor about light and dark really caught my attention. It helped to explain Annabel’s fear of being honest (the light), but why she couldn’t keep it to herself anymore, either (the darkness).

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