runaway

"‘Some days,’ Mammy said in a hoarse voice, ‘I listen to that clock ticking in the hallway. Then I think of all the ticks, all the minutes, all the hours and days and weeks and months and years waiting for me. All of them without them. And I can’t breathe then, like someone’s stepping on my heart, Laila. I get so weak. So weak I just want to collapse somewhere.’"

— A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini