Behind the Ice Wall
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She reached for my hand, and I let her take it, understanding that this particular vulnerability — admitted fully, without the careful editing I’d practiced for over a decade — felt different from anything I’d allowed myself before.
“Perfection protected you once,” she said. “I need you to actually hear that, because I think it’s important. The version of yourself you built after that championship, the Ice Wall, it wasn’t irrational. It was a survival strategy that made sense for a nineteen-year-old with no other tools available to him. But it can’t be allowed to keep running your entire life, Sky. What protected you at nineteen is actively costing you at twenty-eight.”
“What did it cost m