Maybe the reason I've never died in this story is that I've never had something worth dying for before.

Life isn't nearly as stable as we want it to be.

I have always written about subjects that engage me - questions I can't answer myself. They apparently tend to be big moral and ethical issues!

and another claimed it was inherited through a parent who was a carrier of the defective gene. I had always assumed the latter was the case with Claire. After all, surely a child who grew out of grief would be born with a heavy heart.

I always hated when my scars started to fade, because as long as I could still see them, I knew why I was hurting.

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.

As it turns out, you can function while your heart is being torn to shreds.