Fracture Me Book Quotes

This is a book about fracture. About the experiences that make up a life. About the pieces of me. Delving into naked emotion is a terrifying proposition. Digging into our souls to look for answers that may not be there is a ledge most of us avoid. And yet, here I am.

I am so horribly attracted to him.

You’re a people pleaser, aren’t you? You’re the type that can’t stand someone not liking you and showing it.” Raising his head, he laughed openly now. “That’s just...” I wanted to take a book from the shelf beside me and throw it at him. “I don’t even have a word—” “Then I suggest you read a little more so you can find the word you’re looking for.” He hid his chuckle behind a fist.

In the absence of human relationships I formed bonds with paper characters. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction. They

I once threw myself down a flight of stairs rather than face even one moment with a milliner, at whose shop I quit working after discovering the sinister truth about her berets, only to find that the paramedic who repaired my fractured arm was a man who had fired me from a job playing accordion in his orchestra after only two and half performances of a certain opera.

Adam has to work to defend himself against me and I’m exhausting him. I’m making him sick and I’m weakening his body and if he ever slips again. If he ever forgets. If he ever makes a mistake or loses focus or becomes too aware of the fact that he’s using his gift to control what I might do—

It was a beautiful room, not an office at all, and much bigger than it looked from outside--airy and white, with a high ceiling and a breeze fluttering in the starched curtains. In the corner, near a low bookshelf, was a big round table littered with teapots and Greek books, and there were flowers everywhere, roses and carnations and anemones, on his desk, on the table, in the windowsills. The roses were especially fragrant; their smell hung rich and heavy in the air, mingled with the smell of bergamot, and black China tea, and a faint inky scent of camphor. Breathing deep, I felt intoxicated. Everywhere I looked was something beautiful--Oriental rugs, porcelains, tiny paintings like jewels--a dazzle of fractured color that struck me as if I had stepped into one of those little Byzantine churches that are so plain on the outside; inside, the most paradisal painted eggshell of gilt and

Besides, it’d be a shame to lose such a pretty face.

Is it because I intimidate you, Kent? Am I making you nervous?

Because you’re a dumbass,” he says again.

Have you ever had a girlfriend, Kenji?” “What?” He looks mortally offended. “Do I look like the kind of guy who’s never had a girlfriend? Have you even met me?

So go ahead. Do it—open the book. See? You see me, right? And I see you. See? I am reading your face, your eyes, your lips. I know the sufferdust on your brow. I can see you reading and I can tell, too, when you are here, when you’re absent, what you’ve read and how it affects you. There is no more hiding. I see your chords—your fractures, your cold gifts, where and when you’ve hurt people and why. It’s all right there—your stories are written right there on your face!

SHATTER ME has RESTORED ME and you have to BELIEVE ME because it IGNITED ME and you cannot DEFY ME, if you do, you will FRACTURE ME and DESTROY ME. if you want to UNRAVEL ME then you have to IMAGINE ME to REVEAL ME but you can never SHADOW ME.

The sun is an arrogant thing, always leaving the world behind when it tires of us. The moon is a loyal companion. It never leaves. It’s always there, watching, steadfast, knowing us in our light and dark moments, changing forever just as we do.

167 It’s one of those days when the monotony of everything oppresses me like being thrown into jail. The monotony of everything is merely the monotony of myself, however. Each face, even if seen just yesterday, is different today, because today isn’t yesterday. Each day is the day it is, and there was never another one like it in the world. Only our soul makes the identification – a genuinely felt but erroneous identification – by which everything becomes similar and simplified. The world is a set of distinct things with varied edges, but if we’re near-sighted, it’s a continual and indecipherable fog. I feel like fleeing. Like fleeing from what I know, fleeing from what’s mine, fleeing from what I love. I want to depart, not for impossible Indias or for the great islands south of everything, but for any place at all – village or wilderness – that isn’t this place. I want to stop seeing these unchanging faces, this routine, these days. I want to rest, far removed, from my inveterate feigning. I want to feel sleep come to me as life, not as rest. A cabin on the seashore or even a cave in a rocky mountainside could give me this, but my will, unfortunately, cannot. Slavery is the law of life, and it is the only law, for it must be observed: there is no revolt possible, no way to escape it. Some are born slaves, others become slaves, and still others are forced to accept slavery. Our faint-hearted love of freedom – which, if we had it, we would all reject, unable to get used to it – is proof of how ingrained our slavery is. I myself, having just said that I’d like a cabin or a cave where I could be free from the monotony of everything, which is the monotony of me – would I dare set out for this cabin or cave, knowing from experience that the monotony, since it stems from me, will always be with me? I myself, suffocating from where I am and because I am – where would I breathe easier, if the sickness is in my lungs rather than in the things that surround me? I myself, who long for pure sunlight and open country, for the ocean in plain view and the unbroken horizon – could I get used to my new bed, the food, not having to descend eight flights of stairs to the street, not entering the tobacco shop on the corner, not saying good-morning to the barber standing outside his shop? Everything that surrounds us becomes part of us, infiltrating our physical sensations and our feeling of life, and like spittle of the great Spider it subtly binds us to whatever is close, tucking us into a soft bed of slow death which is rocked by the wind. Everything is us, and we are everything, but what good is this, if everything is nothing? A ray of sunlight, a cloud whose shadow tells us it is passing, a breeze that rises, the silence that follows when it ceases, one or another face, a few voices, the incidental laughter of the girls who are talking, and then night with the meaningless, fractured hieroglyphs of the stars.

You learned Thereni.” He looked away, a shade of embarrassed. “Poorly. Mostly in books. I’m sure my pronunciation is a mess. I just thought…” His gaze slid back to me. When he spoke next, it was in fractured, heavily accented Thereni. “Always, you listen to words that are not belonging of you. I want…” He stumbled, struggling. “I want to give you, to speak of you, in your words. Your… voice.

I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk." "Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging frustration well up inside, then stared angrily at the psychiatrist. "Look, I've been religious about this recovery business. I go to AA meetings daily and to your sessions twice a week. I know it's good that I've stopped drinking. But every other aspect of my life feels the same as it did before. No, it's worse. I hate my life. I hate myself." Suddenly I felt a slight warmth in my face, blinked my eyes a bit, and then stared at him. "Bob, I'm afraid our time's up," Smith said in a matter-of-fact style. "Time's up?" I exclaimed. "I just got here." "No." He shook his head, glancing at his clock. "It's been fifty minutes. You don't remember anything?" "I remember everything. I was just telling you that these sessions don't seem to be working for me." Smith paused to choose his words very carefully. "Do you know a very angry boy named 'Tommy'?" "No," I said in bewilderment, "except for my cousin Tommy whom I haven't seen in twenty years..." "No." He stopped me short. "This Tommy's not your cousin. I spent this last fifty minutes talking with another Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you." "You're kidding?" "No, I'm not. Look. I want to take a little time to think over what happened today. And don't worry about this. I'll set up an emergency session with you tomorrow. We'll deal with it then." Robert This is Robert speaking. Today I'm the only personality who is strongly visible inside and outside. My own term for such an MPD role is dominant personality. Fifteen years ago, I rarely appeared on the outside, though I had considerable influence on the inside; back then, I was what one might call a "recessive personality." My passage from "recessive" to "dominant" is a key part of our story; be patient, you'll learn lots more about me later on. Indeed, since you will meet all eleven personalities who once roamed about, it gets a bit complex in the first half of this book; but don't worry, you don't have to remember them all, and it gets sorted out in the last half of the book. You may be wondering -- if not "Robert," who, then, was the dominant MPD personality back in the 1980s and earlier? His name was "Bob," and his dominance amounted to a long reign, from the early 1960s to the early 1990s. Since "Robert B. Oxnam" was born in 1942, you can see that "Bob" was in command from early to middle adulthood. Although he was the dominant MPD personality for thirty years, Bob did not have a clue that he was afflicted by multiple personality disorder until 1990, the very last year of his dominance. That was the fateful moment when Bob first heard that he had an "angry boy named Tommy" inside of him. How, you might ask, can someone have MPD for half a lifetime without knowing it? And even if he didn't know it, didn't others around him spot it? To outsiders, this is one of the most perplexing aspects of MPD. Multiple personality is an extreme disorder, and yet it can go undetected for decades, by the patient, by family and close friends, even by trained therapists. Part of the explanation is the very nature of the disorder itself: MPD thrives on secrecy because the dissociative individual is repressing a terrible inner secret. The MPD individual becomes so skilled in hiding from himself that he becomes a specialist, often unknowingly, in hiding from others. Part of the explanation is rooted in outside observers: MPD often manifests itself in other behaviors, frequently addiction and emotional outbursts, which are wrongly seen as the "real problem." The fact of the matter is that Bob did not see himself as the dominant personality inside Robert B. Oxnam. Instead, he saw himself as a whole person. In his mind, Bob was merely a nickname for Bob Oxnam, Robert Oxnam, Dr. Robert B. Oxnam, PhD.

Only a few words to tell you that my health and my work are not progressing so badly. It astonishes me already when I compare my condition today with what it was a month ago. Before that I knew well enough that one could fracture one’s legs and arms and recover afterward, but I did not know that you could fracture the brain in your head and recover from that too. I still have a sort of “what is the good of getting better?” feeling about me, even in the astonishment aroused in me by my getting well, which I hadn’t dared hope for.

A woman in possession of a bomb is in want of a reason to use it." "Oh god help us, she's been reading old shit again." Kuma said. "Hanging up now," Naira said. "Tell me if anything blows up that's not supposed to." She hung up before Cav could get out more than a mangled " but-" Naira half sensed eyes on her, and half turned to arch a brow at Tarquin. "Pride and Prejudges?" He grinned sheepishly and brushed the hair off his forehead. "I knew you read nonfiction, but somehow fiction didn't fit in with all the... shooting and bombing.

I opened the John Green and read the first five pages. At first, I mistook my stomach pain for the aftermath of a chilli garlic chicken curry I had eaten that night, and powered on past page one, wincing at the knots, until I arrived at page five and vomited blood over the e-reader in the shape of a fractured heart. I doubled over, howling in pain. I could not believe a book could be that appalling. I screamed out: ‘I called this book a daring take on a controversial topic! I said this was a brave and beautiful novel to be cherished for decades to come!’ I clutched my stomach and screamed. I ran out onto the street, shouting nonsense, assaulting people who tried to help, eventually passing out in a motorway layby, covered in slime and scum, having leapt into a polluted pond to cleanse myself of the foulness that had overtaken me. Then I entered the most horrific dreams, the content of which I am not prepared to speak about and that I will take to the grave.

Cocking a brow, she rose. “What’s all this about?” she asked the House, following the trail it had left. Down the hall, along the stairs, all the way down to the library itself. “Where are we going?” Nesta asked the warm air. Mercifully, even the night owls amongst the priestesses had gone to sleep, leaving no one to see her hurrying after the trail of branches. Around the levels of the library they twined, deeper and deeper, until they reached the seventh level. Nesta drew up short as the trail stopped at the edge of the wall of darkness. A light flickered beyond it. Several lights. As if to say, Come. Don’t be afraid. So Nesta sucked in a breath as she stepped into the gloom. Little tea lights wended into a familiar darkness. She and Feyre had once ventured down here—had faced horrors here. No evidence remained of that day. Only the firelit dimness, the candles leading her to the lowest levels of the library. To the pit itself. Nesta followed them, spiraling to the bottom of the pit, where one small lantern glowed, faintly illuminating the rows of books veiled in permanent shadow around it. Heart racing, Nesta lifted the lantern in one hand and gazed at the darkness, untouched by the light from the library high, high above. The heart of the world, of existence. Of self. The heart of the House. “This …” Her fingers tightened on the lantern. “This darkness is your heart.” As if in answer, the House laid a little evergreen sprig at her feet. “A Winter Solstice present. For me.” She could have sworn a warm hand brushed her neck in answer. “But your darkness …” Wonder softened her voice. “You were trying to show me. Show others. Who you are, down deep. What haunts you. You were trying to show them all those dark, broken pieces because the priestesses, and Emerie, and I … We’re the same as you.” Her throat constricted at what the House had gifted her. This knowledge. She lifted the lantern higher and blew out its flame. Let the darkness sweep in. Embraced it. “I’m not afraid,” she whispered into it. “You are my friend, and my home. Thank you for sharing this with me.” Again, Nesta could have sworn that phantom touch caressed her neck, her cheek, her brow. “Happy Solstice,” she said into the beautiful, fractured darkness.

I imagine someone’s given me a book to read, a story to take me away from the torture of my own mind. I want to be someone else somewhere else with something else to fill my mind.

I’ve always had to make myself submissive, subservient, twisted into a pleading, passive mop just to make everyone else feel safe and comfortable. My existence has become a fight to prove I’m harmless, that I’m not a threat, that I’m capable of living among other human beings without hurting them.

Don’t go,” he whispers, eyes on my notebook again. “Please,” he says. “Sit with me. Stay with me.

You say you love me,” he says. “And I know I love you.” He looks up, meets my eyes. “So why the hell can’t we be together?

He asked, “What are you reading?” “Would you believe me if I said a self-help book?” It was a lie. My kindle was filled with hot men on covers and spice so hot that I was sure my face was on fire.

Adam.” I try to laugh and my lips trip on a stifled sob. “I’d recognize your eyes anywhere in the world.

I love you,” I whisper. “So much more than you will ever know.

I’m good at everything,” he points out. “Humble, too.” “And really good-looking.

What a wonderful concept, to be with a mountain. I do think this is how I’ve come to relate to mountains. I allow them to hold me, to show me. I sit with them and gaze out to valleys with them. The book is a poetic meditation in returning to our senses via the mountain, and “living all the way through” to ourselves. Nan Shepherd in The Living Mountain had scary moments – almost falling down a ravine, almost treading on an adder – that shocked her into a “heightened power” of herself. Fear became something that “enlarged rather than constricted the spirit.” “When walking for many hours on a mountain,” she wrote, “the body deepens into a fulfilled trance, the senses keyed,” and she discovers “most nearly what is it to be. I have walked out of the body and into the mountain.” Oh, yes, the knowingness of the mountain. I know such a knowingness.

I didn’t grow up literary and cultured. I used to do speed art – dashing through a gallery between the blockbuster pieces, in a bucket-list way. And when lines of poetry were quoted in a book, I’d skip over them. But it was actually while researching this book and wading curiously into dense essays and texts, following a thread and then applying myself mindfully to big, wise words and expressions which had to be understood with the heart, that I got a feel for how the considered study of life could also dial me directly back into life.

Red Sister "We’re Giljohn’s children. The thought rolled across the smoothness of her mind as the Ancestor’s song grew louder. Sisters of the cage." Hessa had not feared dying. But Nona feared living without her. “The truth is a weapon and lies are a necessary shield.” "All the world and more has rushed eternity’s length to reach this beat of your heart, screaming down the years. And if you let it, the universe, without drawing breath, will press itself through this fractured second and race to the next, on into a new eternity. Everything that is, the echoes of everything that ever was, the roots of all that will ever be, must pass through this moment that you own. Your only task is to give it pause—to make it notice." "His older two were long grown, and little Sali would always be five." "It’s harder to forgive someone else your own sins than those uniquely theirs." “Those that burn short burn bright. The shortest lives can cast the longest shadows.” "The new picture didn’t erase the old—the bump was still a hole, but now it was a bump as well; the old lady was still a young one, but now she was old too. Clera was still her friend, and now an enemy also." “People always want to know things . . . until they hear them, and then it’s too late. Knowledge is a rug of a certain size, and the world is larger. It’s not what remains uncovered at the edges that should worry you, rather what is swept beneath.” Kettle sat with her head back against the bark, her face white as death, a tear running from the corner of her eye. “I can always reach her. A thousand miles wouldn’t matter.” She raised an arm, unsteady, and beneath it a shadow blacker than the night stretched out, reaching for infinity, as if the sun had fallen behind her. “It’s done. She knows I need her. She knows the direction.” “You swear it?” “I swear it.” “By the Ancestor?” “By the Ancestor.” The faintest echo of that grin. “And by the Hope, and the Missing Gods who echo in the tunnels, and by the gods too small for names who dance in buttercups and fall with the rain. Now go. For the love of all that’s holy, go. You wear me out, Nona. And I’ve got to concentrate on being alive. It would break her heart to get here and find me dead.” She drew a shallow breath. “They’re both in that direction. If you take it until you find some sort of trail there’s a good chance you’ll find Ara and the others on it. Try to travel with Ara and Zole. Tarkax may be able to protect you if the Noi-Guin track you from here.” Another shallow breath, snatched in over her pain. “Go! Now!” Nona came forward. She set her canteen in Kettle’s lap and kissed her icy forehead. Then she ran.

If thou hast slain Lysander in his sleep," [Joan] said. Keep him playing the scene until she worked out a plan. "Being o'er shoes in blood, plunge in the deep / And kill me too." Auberon smiled. "All right.

Lenore Calder, hear me when I say, you are stunning, and nothing she says will change that.

According to Gibbon, Roman society began to fall apart after marriage lost its value in the culture, and promiscuity became widespread. Divorce became common, families were fractured and then other social institutions also began to break down. Basically, without the dominance of what we call 'the traditional family,' cultures break down and eventually collapse.” “Isn't that a little bigoted? I mean, nowadays, a lot of people feel that there are many different variations of 'family' and all of them basically valid.” “History done right is a bigoted discipline.” Leyla took the glass of water. She sipped it and then winked at me. “This is good. We need a good intellectual discussion right now. So how is history bigoted?” “I guess what I mean is, it shows things as they really are, or were, rather. Nowadays we maintain all choices for family units are equal. We try to pretend that all beliefs and practices are neutral in relation to each other. But history tells a different story. It shows us that not all beliefs and practices are equal in terms of their effects on people. Some things really are better than others. Democracy really is better than Nazism and Communism. Capitalism, for all its faults, really has benefited far more people than socialism. And, according to convincing arguments from people like Edward Gibbon, society really is better off when traditional marriage and morality are valued, as opposed to when they aren't. It isn't just a religious thing either – Gibbon was not a Christian himself. It's just the bigoted historical fact.

The other way is for a new man to possess me.

A man who overnights self-help books even when he’s giving me the silent treatment. I must have some kind of internal brain damage for thinking that’s undeniably cute.

Remember all those books I read? The romances I tried to use as road maps, a clinical list of how things work? They ain't prepared me for this. For someone to touch you when you're raw like an exposed nerve, when you're still shaky from the adrenaline high, when you can still taste the air of the mineshaft. When you don't feel all that much different from a dead body yourself.

It was one thing for me to have encountered a fracture in the normal progression of time,

Name/ First name: Madeline (mads, or maddy) Middle name: Marie Last name: Fractures --------------------------- Birth/ Age: 17 Date of birth: 9/13 Date of death: none Place of birth: West Place of death: none ---------------------------- Romantic and social/ Gender: Girl Sexuality: heterosexual Friends: 3 Boyfriend/ Girlfriend: none Crush: none ---------------------------- Personality/ Likes:hunting, reading, drawing, knife throwing, music, fighting Dislikes: none can think of Disorders: PTSD (explained in history) Personality: Strong, has had a rough life, may seem stuck up at times, is close to her 3 friends as she can be because she is afraid to loose them if they see her violent side. She has this side because of what happened when she and her twin brother were small. ---------------------------- History/ History: was born in west katos, and lost parents and older brothers when she was five, only she and her twin survived. Was on the streets for one year with her brother before he was found while he was looking for food. They were reunited at the age of 7 one year later. He was living at the palace with a noble family, she was allowed to return with him and stay, she soon became close friends with the secondborn boy Jacob (if this is'nt fine let me know). When she was 13 her brother was kidnapped by a group from the east, she soon discovered that they were the same group that killed their family.4 years later she is still looking. Now she works at the palace as a hunter, archivest, and guard, and does some art. Lore: ( Any lore behind your character?) ---------------------------- Appearance/ Description : Dark brown hari, Forest green eyes, and one scar on the left side of her face from her first fight. Picture: Hair: Dark Brown Eyes: kind of almond shaped but also round and are forest green Skin: lightly tan ---------------------------- Family/ Mother : Deceased Father: Deceased Husband/ Wife: None Sons/ Daughters/ Offspring : None ---------------------------- Other/ Living situation: Small cottage in woods with her 3 friends Money: not rich but not poor either Pets: A wolf named Alla (a-la) Job: Hunter, guard, and archivest Other Side: West

Writers on evangelical masculinity have long celebrated the role guns play in forging Christian manhood. From toy guns in childhood to real firearms gifted in initiation ceremonies, guns are seen to cultivate authentic, God-given masculinity. A 2017 survey revealed that 41 percent of white evangelicals own guns, a number higher than members of any other faith group and significantly higher than the 30 percent of Americans overall who own firearms. In 2018, the National Rifle Association elected none other than Oliver North as president. Introduced as “a legendary warrior for American freedom,” North opened the annual meeting with a patriotic and unapologetically Christian invocation. At the meeting’s prayer breakfast, he reminded members that they were “in a fight . . . in a brutal battle to preserve the liberties that the good Lord presents us with.” At the same meeting, former Major League first baseman Adam LaRoche pontificated that Jesus was no pacifist. Jesus came not to bring peace, but a sword. LaRoche was sporting a black T-shirt emblazoned with the message “Jesus loves me and my guns.”2 It’s not just the religious rhetoric that is striking here, or the fact that it could have been lifted straight out of dozens, if not hundreds, of books on evangelical masculinity. A

She felt the ice go, felt the beginning of the short fall. But the stabbing cold wet didn't come. Instead her feet scrambled on the crumbling floor and she felt herself yanked hard by the belt toward the nearer of the hull walls. She grabbed for handholds and found herself clinging not to a bumper or a length of cordage or any other bit of boat hardware, but to a boy with wide, terrified eyes. He wrapped his arms around her, and held her as tightly as she had ever been held, as the floor behind them splintered and reached out with its webwork of cracks in all directions, as if the ice itself knew Mare was still there, and it still wanted to see her fall. With his back to the wall, the boy whistled three discordant notes, and instantly the splintering stopped just shy of the surface directly under her feet. "How did you do that?" Mare whispered, turning her head to stare over her shoulder and down at the fractured floor of the tunnel. Instead of answering, the boy asked, "Are you alright?" He looked at the rope that still tethered her to the loop of cordage overhead. "Oh, I see. You were fine all along." "Well, you did save me from wet feet and a lot of maneuvering," Mare said. They were still holding fast to each other, but neither moved to release the other. It makes for a very romantic image, but for her part, Mare was occupied with working out the safest way to let go, and the safest direction in which to move when she did. Also, she'd dropped her staff, which she would need in order to disengage the tether hook from the loop it hung from, directly over the center of the radiating cracks. Along with her drawing pad, which there was no way she was leaving without. That is, she was mostly occupied with all that, because she had never held anyone so closely or for so long, there was a small collection of synapses in her brain that could not fail to notice that out of the corner of her right eye, she could see the boy's cheekbone, and a scattering of frost clinging to his curling dark sideburns. And as for the boy, well, for reasons that will shortly become evident, he was in a state where nearly everything he encountered made his heart ache with wonder and joy. And although he had acted on pure instinct when he'd pulled Mare out of the way of the splintering ice, now he was holding on simply because he didn't want to let go. "I need my staff there," Mare said, nodding back toward the center of the tunnel. The boy had to lift his head to see over hers, in order to follow the gesture. And for a moment, Mare felt the skin just below his jaw press against her forehead. Under different circumstances, she might have noticed that she ought to have felt his pulse there. Or then again, perhaps not.

The world wouldn’t understand our love for her. They’d call it obsession, dangerous, call it every word they reach for when something is too big for them to name. But what we felt for her wasn’t obsession instead of love. It was obsession because of love. She was the piece that made us whole. The proof that the fracture between us had been waiting for her all along. She didn’t love Bastion. She didn’t love me. She loved us. Both halves. The whole. And that meant she wasn’t just ours—she was meant for us. Other men said they’d die for their women. We never said it, because it wasn’t enough. Death was too easy. We would live for her. Burn for her. Break laws, break dynasties, break the world if that’s what it took. Our devotion wasn’t just a vow.

I just don’t like joining groups. If there’s one thing my father taught me, it’s that you shouldn’t join anything. Church groups, book groups, or even crocheting groups. They’re nothing

I just don’t like joining groups. If there’s one thing my father taught me, it’s that you shouldn’t join anything. Church groups, book groups, or even crocheting groups. They’re nothing but drama.

Some stories ask to be told; this one refused to stay silent. These pages carry quiet pieces of me—the soft ones, the fractured ones, the ones I’ve never shared aloud. Writing this book felt like holding my breath and placing small fragments of my heart into your hands, trusting you to treat them gently.