[She thinks about this question very seriously. She thinks about her answer. It would be so much easier, she considers, to talk about the ways she used to love poorly.]

I tell people about my pain, instead of hiding it away. I tell them I lived, and that I'm strong enough to carry it and bare it to the world. Sometimes nothing happens. But sometimes they hear something they needed, and they trust me with some of theirs. I've always been good at figuring people out, at seeing what they want and why it matters and what they'll do for it. I used to use that to put them in situations to do what I wanted, even if it hurt them. But now I use it to imagine who they feel like, from the inside, and I feel it with them, and for them, and I want them to carry their pain as lightly as I have learned to carry mine.