“But I had learned to hide what I felt. No, that's not true. There was no learning involved. I had been born knowing how to hide what I felt.”

“I learned how to stop crying.I learned how to hide inside of myself.I learned how to be somebody else.I learned how to be cold and numb.”

“But I had learned to survive. I may have felt as if I couldn't breathe freely at times, may have felt caged and desperate, may have questioned all I ever was, but I had learned enough to keep me where I needed to be and to live to see what life would continue to bring my way if I continued to look for it.”

“I felt melancholy, I felt joy, I felt dread, I felt a sadness so deep it cannot be described in words. I felt emotions that have not been given names, I felt emotions that have been given the wrong names, I saw what it meant to feel and I saw that it was all the same feeling and I felt big feelings, the old feelings, the ones before language, before the mind had language, before the mind had learned to tell a fake story called consciousness and developed anxiety when it invented time, and danger, and risk, and probability, and the future.”

“I learned how to hide the scars underneath layers of makeup and a smile.”

“There is a point. I don't know what it is, but everything I've had, and everything I've lost, and everything I felt-it meant something. Maybe there isn't a meaning to life. Maybe there's only a meaning to living.That's what I've learned. That's what I'm going to be doing from now on.Living.And loving, as sappy as it sounds”