I don’t know which is worse, being too sympathetic or feeling nothing at all. Sometimes the world shaped itself into a paradise filled with people who shared an umbrella with you on a rainy day or a 30-minute fireworks display when you’re walking home alone and you least expect it. Most of the time the world morphed into a form of hell. Outside there were places that I was too frightened to go to and inside my teeth gritted from the cold. My problem was that words were never enough but they were all I had. I spent my whole life with chunks of flesh missing from my body. I felt trapped but I was too confused and weak to find a way out. Now I lie in bed and there are cracks in the ceiling that remind me of the childhood doodles locked away in my attic: a lightning bolt, a branch of an apple tree, a constellation, and for some reason I suddenly think of you embracing me at night when I feel like dying. Safety in a world turned hell, this is what love feels like for someone like me. And as long as I can feel this I am not scared, the words are enough, and nothing can corrupt me.