“I would like to know just what kind of nothing I am”

“she confuses everything i am, shakes the change out of my pokets and makes me want to barter with foreign currency.”

“Sure, society understands visible shackles-- they get the symbolism of the wheelchair, of prosthetics, of a bumper sticker reading disabled veteran, but they still struggle for comprehension of the profound, invisible shackles that an illness such as [Chronic Fatigue] puts on a person's body.”

“Marriage is nothing but a continuation of what you have already have.”

“The Pope replied, “of what should we not be afraid? We should not fear the truth about ourselves.” He spoke of how Saint Peter himself, the rock on which Christ had built his church, had told Christ to leave him, “for I am a sinful man.” Peter was a sinful man. We all are, including popes. We are imperfect and “our hearts are anxious.” But we cannot and should not let the fact of our unworthiness and flaws and failures build that wall with a kind of inverted pride that says, Oh, I’m so unworthy, and I’d know how unworthy I am better than you would.”

“I was in the ecstasy of babies then. I was on a long, oxytocin high. Noone told me about this. Noone told me I would feel like a wild animal ready to kill or be killed at a moment’s notice with no hesitation at all right now for my baby. I would sit on the bed at night nursing Lally and I would imagine a lion jumping through the window. I would plan how to kill him. I knew the lion would be immediately dead. I knew that no matter what, my baby would survive.”

“But my brain winds and wends. Back and forth. Up and down. It feels like the county fair has inhabited my mind-- complete with sketchy rides, carnies, and sugar-amped kids crying over lost balloons. So loud and disorienting. I want it to pack up and move on to the next town. I want my mind to be an open grassy field again with crickets and dandelions.”