I empathise with Estella more than any other character in literature.
All she wanted was to protect him. She knew she couldn’t feel, and she couldn’t love, and she never would. She was rendered entirely incapable of maintaining a sane, normal, functioning relationship, and she was brave enough to accept that. She knew she was broken, and damaged, and cracked inside, and she tried to save him from all that ice, and dark. She tried to make sure he found someone worthy, someone who deserved him. Surely everyone’s guilty of that, to some degree? We all try to maintain a healthy distance, preserving the world, protecting everything tender and warm from everything hard and cold inside of us. We all persuade ourselves that we need no one, and no one needs us, and in some perverse way, in rejecting those responsibilities, we shoulder them all.
I am your blade.
