...painfully curious...about how it feels to fall.

I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.

The fact that you were essentially dead does not register until you begin to come alive.

There is, in the end, the letting go.

And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

My god! people say. You have so much self-control! And later: My god. You're so, so sick. When people say this, they turn their heads, you've won your little game. You have proven your thesis that no-body-loves-me-every-body-hates-me, guess-I'll-just-eat-worms. You get to sink back into your hospital bed, shrieking with righteous indignation. See? you get to say. I knew you'd give up on me. I knew you'd leave.

One really ought to be afraid of self-torture. But it tempted me. It begged. The dark place that my mind was fast becoming blends, in my memory, with the dark womb of church: the chant, the fugue of prayer, the strange erotic energy that carving a very small cross into my thigh with a nail had brought.