Carried: Marasmus (Protein and carbohydrate deprivation reaction and/or…) (II)

It shows as a conviction, laid down before memory, that one is not entitled to take up room or to have needs met, and, at its extreme, a quiet readiness to conclude the story altogether. It traces to the earliest rejection, from before or just after birth. This is a grave pattern, and where such a wish is live its care belongs with someone trained to help, now. What it asks for is to let another person insist, against the old verdict, that one's place here is not in question.

Some part of me decided, before I could remember, that I was never owed a place here at all.

The scapegoat, laid with the year's wrongs and driven out into the wilderness to carry them away and not return, made to bear an atonement that was never its own. The form implies a task: to refuse the load placed on one before one could refuse, and turn back toward the living.