You're just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they're already in us. That's why we pretend them in the first place.

It's the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie - one that I've lost myself to - which is that I'll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie all over again just to recapture that feeling of being inside something real. Which, I know, doesn't make any sense.

Because I understand all the ways of trying to escape, how sometimes you escape one prison only to find you've built yourself a different one.

I miss my father. I miss my grandfather. I miss my home. And I miss my mother. But the thing is, for almost three years, I managed not to miss any of them. And then I spent that one day with that one girl. One day ... It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of myself than I even realized there was to give. But then she was gone. And only after I'd been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.

I am adrenaline slammed into inertia: a fast car stuck in traffic.

I realize now that dying is easy. Living is hard.

I realize then that it's not enough to know what someone is called. You have to know who they are.