So many cells in my body have died and regenerated since the days of the Dream House. My blood and taste buds and skin have long since re-created themselves. My fat still remembers, but just barely - within a few years, it will have turned itself over completely. My bones too. But my nervous system remembers. 

We think of cliches as boring and predictable, but they are actually one of the most dangerous things in the world. Your brain can't engage a clich, not properly - it skitters right over the phrase or sentence or idea without a second thought. To describe an abusive situation is almost certainly to deploy cliche. "if I can't have you, no one can." "Who will believe you?" "It was good, tehn it was basd, then it was good again." "If I stated, I would have died." Awful, dehumanising, and yet straight out of central casting. This triteness, this predictabilitiy, has a flattening effect, making singularly boring what is a defining and terrible experience. 

This was such an original and engrossing way to tell a memoir. Machado is frank and raw, telling her story and the stories of many queer women who are caught in abusive and inescapable situations. 

I would also recommend reading Jess Hill's See What You Made Me Do alongside this, which details the complexities and barriers that are faced by victims on domestic abuse.