When you're a parent you find yourself looking at the unknown that is your child, trying to find a piece of yourself inside her, because sometimes that is what it takes to claim.

No child really chooses his religion; it is just the luck of the draw which blanket of beliefs you are wrapped in.

if you don't get sick, you won't get well.

Good people are good people; religion has nothing to do with it.

These days her entire life was about making people believe she was someone she wasn't anymore.

I don't want to make the same mistake twice. I don't want to tell myself it's over when it's not.

What was wrong with me? I had a decent life. I was healthy. I wasn't starving or maimed by a land mine or orphaned. Yet somehow, it wasn't enough. I had a hole in me, and everything I took for granted slipped through it like sand. I felt like I had swallowed yeast, like whatever evil was festering inside me had doubled in size.