“I have never fit into this town, this marriage, this skin. I am the child who was picked last to play tag; I am the girl who laughed although she did not get the joke; I am the piecemeal part of you that you pretend doesn't exist, except it is all I am, all the time. ”

“Other people look at me and think: That poor woman; she has a child with a disability. But all I see when I look at you is that girl who had memorized all the words to Queen's 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by the time she was three, the girl who crawls into bed with me whenever there's a thunderstorm - not because you're afraid but because I am, the girl whose laugh has always vibrated inside my own body like a tuning fork. I would never have wished for an able-bodied child, because that child would have been someone who wasn't you.”

“ How are you going to know who I am, she finally said, if I dont look like me?”

“Who I am, and what I am capable of doing has always managed to surprise me.”

“As she gets sicker, she fades a little more, until I am afraid one day I will wake up and not be able to see her at all.”

“To be fair, I am not the same man. The one who listened. The one who believed her.”

“You can run but you can't hide... but I can try. I feel air catch in my lungs and I get a cramp in my side and this pain, this wonderful physical pain that I can place, reminds me that after all I am still alive. ”