“I have been smashed and put back together so many times nothing works right. Nothing is where it should be, heavy thumping in my shoulder where my heart now beats.”

“I deserved the shaking and the headaches and the fact that every single time I took a breath I felt a squeezing in my chest, my heart beating even though I wished it wasn't.”

“I felt nothing all the time, and it had started to feel normal. It should have scared me, but it didn't.”

“Whatever happened to me just now has gotten to me, broken past the fragile shell I've built. More than my memory is gone. My soul has wings that beat to a heart I don't understand and I see things, feel things that I know aren't from here, but that are so real.”

“This is what happiness is, past the rubbish of its overuse as a word, past the cracked gloss of the letters that mean nothing when strung together. They mean something now, and I know what it's like when you and someone else are right together. How simple is is, and how amazing.”

“I don't know how I know that, but I do. I can feel the beat of that truth inside me. Taste it bitter on my tongue.Sometimes, like now, I didn't think I want to know who I really am.”

“Like a heart, and I wish mine wasn't beating.”