“I’d wanted emotion but couldn’t find it here, so I settled for motion.”

“I was sinking deeper in and losing my grasp at the surface. I was drowning. Drowning in an emotion I’d never felt before. Never wanted to feel—until now. Something so fresh, so new. Even as I tried to place this emotion to something, it left me feeling bewildered. I needed more. More of this toxic sweetness I couldn’t help but indulge.”

“Here too it’s masquerade, I find: As everywhere, the dance of mind.I grasped a lovely masked procession,And caught things from a horror show…I’d gladly settle for a false impression,If it would last a little longer, though.”

“I could feel my blood just starting to boil, like when I’d lost my car keys and I knew they were around somewhere close, but I couldn’t find them anyway, and I wanted to scream.”

“I’d never been fond of gratuitous cursing. I figured it was lazy, a communication habit of people who couldn’t be bothered finding the correct word.”

“It was as if something snapped in two deep inside me. My parents-- the people I’d loved the most in the world, the ones I’d always told all my secrets to, the ones I’d wanted to hide with far away from the rest of the world. They had lied, and I couldn’t imagine why. It couldn’t possibly matter why.”