I don't believe in prom,' I reminded her as she rounded a corner. I expertly angled my raisin bran to accomodate the g-forces. I'd done this before.

I always liked routine. I suppose I never found boredom very boring.

I fear oblivion. I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark.

The urge to make art or contemplate philosophy does not go away when you are sick. Those urges just become transfigured by illness.

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get." I know what she's talking about. The something deeper and more secret. It's like cracks inside of you. Like there are these fault lines where things don't meet up right.

What can we do?" Mom asked again. I shrugged. But she kept asking, as if there were something she could do, until I just kind of crawled across the couch into her lap and my dad came over and held my legs really tight and I wrapped my arms all the way around my mom's middle and they held on to me for hours while the tide rolled in.

For me, the hero’s journey is not the voyage from weakness to strength. The true hero’s journey is the voyage from strength to weakness.