More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Your foot’s not ugly. It’s never been ugly. It’s held you up all your life, even when it hurt. Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s so much strength and beauty in that.”
Theirs was the sort of old, familiar friendship where talking about nothing in particular was the kindest, most comforting thing they could do for each other. The other things, the big things, were understood but went unsaid because sometimes saying things out loud made them hurt that much more.
And what she saw, for the first time, was not ugliness at all but pain so enormous and consuming that it had felt like dying. I’m sorry, she said silently to her past self. I’m sorry I hated you. I’m sorry I wasn’t kinder. All the shame that had been tangled up in the memory was annihilated, leaving only compassion and regret in its place.
“You know I used to teach dance. I’ve always loved it, the teaching and the dancing, but it wasn’t quite enough. This is the life I wanted. This life of contentment and unexpected excitement, of little everyday joys, where I don’t just get to be myself but also get to be embraced as myself. It’s miraculous.”
Like the old Seras, who hadn’t abandoned her either. They’d stayed with her all this time to tell a story, every time she forgot it, about flying and defying and what an incredible, joyful act of resistance it was to simply exist.
The magic of her past had been a gift, but the magic of her present had been earned.
