I'm going to eviscerate you and leave your organs on a pike in the yard as a warning to those who wear large jewelry.

She knew what it was to wait for someone who would never come home. She knew that grief, like a scar, faded but never really went away.

Dead bodies are such trouble,” Evie said with a little sigh, and Mabel had to turn her head away so as not to laugh.

It's as if I've inherited a skin I cannot quite fit, and so I walk about constantly pulling and and tugging, pinning and pruning, trying desperately to fill it out, hoping that no one will look at me struggling and say, 'That one there- she's a fraud, Look how she doesn't fit at all.

I'm going to eviscerate you and leave your organs on a pike in the yard as a warning to those who wear large jewelry.

We create the illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. And when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.

My misery is reaching epidemic proportions.