I felt deeply tricked. Stunned. And furious. I also felt my default emotion: numbness.

I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.

The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.

It was a salad bar of phobias

The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

Most of us have love in our lives. Most of us love other people are are ourselves loved by others. But make no mistake: you are alone in the world. You were born alone, even if you were born conjoined. And you die alone, unable to bring a single person with you.