Stuck On My Mind

And though I act cocky, and have a big mouth, and my father always tells me I have all the answers, I know I don't have any of the answers about love, about being grown up. I feel small and scared and defenseless and damaged as the small sparrow I'd pried out of the mouth of a neighborhood cat and bandaged up and fed, for days, with an eyedropper, before taking it down to the park and releasing it, after my father convinced me that it waas wrong to keep it, and that eventually it would have to make it on its own or die.

Vertigo by Louise DeSalvo (memoir)