Hi Am-Chau, can I ask where your name comes from? It's lovely.

Hi! Am-Chau is Vietnamese and it means 'daughter of the moon'. Yarkona is Hebrew for green. I thought it was quite attractive.

Am-Chau is Vietnamese and it means 'daughter of the moon'

I thought so. Vietnam kind of being my specialist subject at the moment.

OK, here goes. I'm posting my ending to my story called "Perfect" It's the second, less symbolic ending. But I still hate it. Now I think it's anvilly.The main character is a single woman with a disability who both has affection for and resentment of her roommate's pre-teen daughter for her charmed life. But daughter's life is not so easy because her divorced parents fight over her.Autobiographical? Nah;)
"Excuse me," she tells you. "I'd like a few minutes to talk with Dave. If Katie comes out here, tell her to go in her room.This is between us. She steps out the door. You let it click closed, but you stay in the living room, transfixed by the dark side of Perfect. It can't be easy being fought over like a favorite figurine. As predicted, Katie does come to the living room, but you don't send her away.TBC

"I hate it when they get like this," Katie says.
"They just do it cause they love you so much," you say. It is both true and the Thing to Say.
"That doesn't make it easier.When I was little, I used to wish they would die." Katie says, in a tiny little voice. "I think everyone wishes that about parents. No more nagging, no more rules..."
"No, not like that. So I wouldn't have to choose." "Choose?"
"Between my mom and my dad. See, I like being at my dad's cause all my friends still live there. I like being at my mom's because I miss her when I'm not and she has more time for me."TBC

"There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"No, but they both want to be the one I love the best. I can't pick."
"No, you can't. Do you want a peanut butter sandwich?"
"Ok. And I'm still glad they didn't. Die, I mean."
You get out the peanut butter and the bread. Your movements in the kitchen are both slow and deliberate.Katie takes this as a struggle;most able-bodied people do, in your experience. Or is it that Americans expect everyone to be fast? TBC

"I can help you with that, if you want." Katie says. "No, I've got it. I'd like to tell you it gets bettter. With your parents. And it will, kind of. Time helps, but you're never going to wake up one day and have it all make perfect sense." "Really?"Everyone else tells me I'll understand when I am older. I hate that. It's just something they say so they don't have to tell me things."
You remember that feeling. Also, the sense that one day you would wake up and understand everything. You held it until the middle of college when reality took it away. You miss it more than your last boyfriend. END And that's it, except for a truly eye-rolling moment where a character actually says "Nobody's perfect." which seemed clever as fuck once upon a time, but now makes me cringe.

What's the problem, erika?

If it feels anvilly to you, then get back to the objective correlative. You know - the concrete things and gestures that can carry the import of the story.

It might be a little too explicit and summarizing here:

You remember that feeling. Also, the sense that one day you would wake up and understand everything. You held it until the middle of college when reality took it away. You miss it more than your last boyfriend.

I'd say take out "when reality took it away" and then find a physical detail that she would miss about her boyfriend (which you can set up earlier in the story) that she misses. So something like...

You remember that feeling and the faith that one day the world would make sense. You miss it. You miss it more than waking up looking into [ex-boyfriend's] untroubled, sleeping face.

Well, looking at it now, feels like I'm trying too hard to go"See, look. Irony? What looks normal isn't, get it!(Although divorce is certainly normal enough now, but you know what I mean, right?)

What looks normal isn't, get it!

Well, but that's the basic premise of the whole story. It's not a useless epiphany - it's all in the execution whether you can get that across. You just don't want it too pat.