"It's nothing horrible. I just came from a place like this where I spent almost three years in. I didn't have a choice but to get used to it since I couldn't actually leave."

Sounds simple enough, but what Angela leaves out are the hard times, the long nights, the depression, the drinking, the physical pains. Getting acclimated to the situation was a survival mechanism. The list of options of how to deal was a short one and she went through all of them at least twice.

"Pretending can only take you but so far, though," she muses as she adds some red to the quickly developing portrait. "Sooner or later, reality catches up with you."