Kill Switch by Penelope Douglas

He watched my mother as I watched Winter.
Was that it then? Did I do to Winter in high school what
my father did to my mother? Did I groom her?
I looked up, meeting my own black eyes in the mirror.
The secret of life that everyone knew and everyone forgot
was that we weren’t alone. We thought we were unique. We
thought we were the first.
No one has been through what I’ve been through.
No one else is feeling this.
No one knows what it’s like to be me.
This is the first time anyone has endured what I’ve
endured, right?
They’re lies we tell ourselves, because we think we’re
special. Because it would lessen the entitlement to suffer to
know what we’re going through is not uncommon. It was a
secret I never forgot and was able to use to keep things in
perspective, so I could get through the shit in my head, but
now…
Now I wished I could forget it. I wanted to be alone.
I didn’t want to know that I was like him or he was like me
or that life followed patterns and history repeated itself. I
wasn’t him, and Winter wasn’t my mother, and no one has
been where we were.
This is special.
It’s different.
It’s unique and all mine.
She and I…we’re alone in the universe. No one was us.
And unlike my mother at thirteen, Winter fucking deserved
everything that would happen to her.
I shaved and finished in front of the sink, knowing any
doubts I had wouldn’t make me feel any better than being right
where I was.