“IN MY DREAMS I HOLD A KNIFE” by Ashley Winstead

“Memories are powerful things.

But–and this is important, my therapist said–so are the dark spaces.
The things you choose, consciously or not, to repress. Always, they’re the things you need protection from. The too much: too terrifying, too shameful, too devastating. The things that, if allowed, would threaten the very core of who you’re supposed to be. 

It turns out the real you is a quilt, made up of the light and the dark.

The life you’ve lived in the sunshine and your shadow life, stretching underneath the surface of your mind like a deep underwater world, exerting invisible power.

You are a living, breathing story made up of the moments in time you cherish, all strung together, and those you hide.
The moments that seem lost. Until the day they’re not.”

Kindle, 2022