“...when they look at me, I so badly want to be who they see.”

“A lie took two parties - the weaver of the tale and the sucker who so badly wanted to believe it.”

“I used to stand in front of the mirror in the bathroom to see what they were staring at. I wanted toknow what made their heads turn, what it was about me that was so incredibly different. At first Icouldn’t tell. I mean, I was just me.Then one day, when I looked in the mirror, I understood. I looked into my own eyes and I hatedmyself, maybe as much as all of them did.That was the day I started to believe they might be right.”

“I didn't want to see her because it would make me feel better. I came because without her, it's hard to remember who I am...”

“It was so damn hard to find love in this world, to locate someone who could make you feel that there was a reason you'd been put on this earth. A child, I imagined, was the purest form of that. A child was the love you didn't have to look for, didn't have to prove anything to, didn't have to worry about losing. Which is why, when it happened, it hurt so badly.”

“Suddenly I realize that this is what I've been waiting for - a man who depends entirely on me... I dreamed for years of a man who couldn't live without me, a man who pictured my face when he closed his eyes, who loved me when I was a mess in the morning and when dinner was late and even when I overloaded the washing machine and burned out the motor. [My son] stares up at me as if I can do no wrong. I have always wanted someone who treats me the way he does; I just didn't know that I'd have to give birth to him.”

“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.”