“What you see in this picture, and what I see in this picture, are two very different things. You might see a little girl in a hotel room, preparing for a gymnastics meet in Las Vegas, looking out on the world from her hotel room. But, I see something different.”
“In the still quiet of the night, I don’t watch Netflix or do dishes or take luxurious baths. Nah, I stare at the ceiling and replay all of my parenting mistakes, over and over again in my head. Guilt comes flooding in. Doubt.”
“He cried for what felt like 24 straight hours. He felt like an idiot for believing. I didn’t have all the answers. I didn’t really have any.”
“Well, unfortunately we have to do it now. I’d call your husband. If he starts now, he might get here just in time. Now hop in the shower and give yourself a good scrub with this soap.”
“He is smart as a whip, yet school isn’t always his jam. He’d rather talk about why Sally is giving away 24 of her apples instead of solving the story problems in math. He can read your emotions on your face, and will always know who is lonely on the playground.”
“I am not a fan of public restrooms but knew I would be on the road. That ‘smart’ decision changed my life forever.”
“I willed my legs awake from the spinal tap, like Uma Thurman in ‘Kill Bill,’ and then I physically dragged myself from my bed to a wheelchair to see him. I demanded a nurse take me to him. He was blue, his skin covered with deep purple spots. He wasn’t crying. The whole room was especially quiet. They had no clue what was going on with his skin.”
“It was hard for my husband to look at me. We had to call our family and tell them the news. They took it much harder than I did. All my mom wanted to do was hug me. It was very smothering.”
“I sat on the stairs thinking, ‘surely he will get sick of yelling at me at some point.’ He didn’t. So I locked myself in the bathroom. He broke the door down.”
“Before we were even ‘out,’ the church preschool where we both worked found out about our relationship and fired us. We were told we were living a life of sin.”
