The woman who is liberated must never cross the line in which we ask men to examine their actions; we are a country built on the ideas, ingenuity, canniness, and downright brutality of man—to question their motives is to question our existence.

We can ask for forgiveness, from a god, from a friend, a lover, even ourselves. We can ask for forgiveness from all of the people we’ve wronged, but we can never get back the one thing we’re truly hoping to find when we asked: our innocence—the person we were before that piece of us was taken, ripped away and shattered at our feet, leaving us to learn how to pick ourselves back up and move past it.

Almost nine years later, I know that stars don’t burn forever, and even the brightest can shatter into a million, burning sparks before falling from the sky.