“I need to take an emotional breath, step back, and remind myself who’s actually in charge of my life.”

“I have to remind myself to breathe -- almost to remind my heart to beat!”

“I disconnected as a sleepy Seth stepped out of the bedroom. “Who’s Dante? Was that a collect call to the Inferno?”“They won’t accept the charges,” I murmured.”

“At times of great emotion, good or bad, I find I am gone, somewhere else, watching it happen to me, a different me. I miss a lot of my own life, my own moments, because I step outside myself. I feel it all more in retrospect than in actual time.”

“My emotional life: dialectic between craving for privacy and need to submerge myself in a passionate relationship to another.”

“He takes two steps back. Closer to the portal.I can't stop myself. "Ben," I call. And I'm not even embarrassed about how helpless my voice sounds.Don't go."I'll come back for you." He takes another step back. "I promise."Stay."Janelle Tenner," he says. "I will always fucking love you." And then he takes one more step back. Into the portal.And the blackness swallows him whole.”