“What is it like to wear another person’s skin?”“I don’t have a good answer for that,” I said. “It hurts.”“Can you remember their stories? Can you feel the love that they felt?”

“I’d never felt like this, like I wanted to climb into another person’s skin.”

“But I can hardly remember what it felt like. It's like everything that happens to you. It doesn't feel real.”

“But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way I can take this personally.”

“You don't need to be seeing someone to be in love with her. You can have lost touch with her, she can have hurt you, even inexplicably. If you ever felt that you really knew her and that it was what you knew that you loved, and if you remember what it was you once knew, why is it so crazy to retain that love still?”

“Whoever said that love hurts was wrong. Love is excruciating, especially when you can feel it slipping through your fingers and there is nothing you can do about it. Like someone was playing tug-of-war with my limbs, ripping to shreds whatever was left behind. What it would feel like when love was lost...I wouldn't survive that”