I'm just a friendly bystander who they occasionally ask questions of. That's my level of involvement.

Heaven is comfort, but it's still not living.

For me, heaven would be a lack of alienation. The whole time I was growing up, I felt comfort was inherently evil. I think that for me heaven isn't about couches and milk shakes and never having a troubling thought again.

The damage can fester under layers of time and change, and an ignorant, thoughtless remark can easily reopen the wound.

Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain.

Tess was my first experience of a woman who had inhabited her weirdness, moved into the areas of herself that made her distinct from those around her, and learned how to display them proudly.

And there she was, alone and walking out in the cornfield while everyone else I cared for sat together in one room. She would always feel me and think of me. I could see that, but there was no longer anything I could do. Ruth had been a girl haunted and now she would be a woman haunted. First by accident and now by choice. All of it, the story of my life and death, was hers if she chose tot ell it, even to one person at a time.