Perfection does not make me feel safe. It makes me feel watched. What makes me trust people is the willingness to let the mask slip a little. To admit the marriage is struggling. To admit the kids are hard. To admit there are Goldfish crackers ground into the backseat and they cried in the church parking lot fifteen minutes ago. To show up in divorce court and be allowed to say, “I’m scared as hell right now that this man who has betrayed me in every imaginable way is going to trick you into believing it’s a good idea to give him custody of my daughter, and the thought makes me so angry and so filled with terror that I feel like I might actually die.”