I mean, I know but I don’t. I’ve always been different, but to me different is normal.

Maybe even the smallest places mean something.

I want you to remember that you can’t feel responsible for everything. We’re your parents, and we will figure us out. All you need to do – any of you” – she looks at my brothers – ” is be a kid for now and let us be there for you.”“All of us?” Dusty says. “Even those of us without neurological disorders?” “All of you.

I’m sorry. I love you. But not sorry I love you because I could never be sorry for that.

She is oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. The same elements that are inside the rest of us, but I can’t help thinking she’s more than that and she’s got other elements going on that no one’s ever heard of, ones that make her stand apart from everybody else. I feel this brief panic as I think, What would happen if one of those elements malfunctioned or just stopped working altogether? I make myself push this aside and concentrate on the feel of her skin until I no longer see molecules but Violet.

People either see me or they don’t.

It’s okay to laugh you know. The earth is not going to split open. You’re not going to hell. Believe me.

In 1912, a man named Franz Reichelt jumped off the Eiffel Tower wearing a parachute suit he designed himself. He jumped to test his invention – he expected to fly – but instead he fell straight down, hitting the ground like a meteor and leaving a 5.9-inch-deep crater from the impact. Did he mean to kill himself? Doubtful. I think he was just cocky, and also stupid.

A string of thoughts run through my head like a song I can’t get rid of, over and over in the same order: I am broken. I am a fraud. I am impossible to love.

Everyone in my life is a stranger, and that includes me.