Before I turned 7 I was sweetness and light. I was the daughter everyone would have wanted. My hair was long and shiny and brown, my eyes had already lightened from the dark brown they were in my infancy to the bright sparkling green they are today. Cute, happy, obedient, smart... and then sometime before my 8th birthday, that Wendy was lost forever. A tragedy had taken something precious from me, and I learned that just because someone loves you, it doesn't mean you can trust them not to hurt you. I became harder. I learned sarcasm. I lashed out at those closest to me - those who should have protected me, but instead let me down and betrayed me.

The psychologists and therapists and counsellors all said I should rechannel my anger into something positive - art, music, other such nonsense. They said I should turn my hatred back into love. But it was the anger and the hatred that protected me. It kept me from ever trusting like that again.

And so as I grew, I tested everyone around me. I had to know how much I could trust them. Poor Mr. Right has been through every hellish test you could imagine a woman putting a man thorugh, and yet I still hold him back to some degree. Because I learned it is easier to be angry than to apologize. And it is easier to say I hate you than it is to say I love you. It is easier to take the small slights and blow them out of proportion that it is to admit you've hurt me. Passion can tear your walls down and make your eyes tell the truth. So in passion, it is better to turn it to anger, to divert the eyes of those watching you, to scare others away.

I've done the opposite from what they wanted me to do: I rechannelled every positive emotion into something hard and hateful. Because I don't trust you.