32 Days in May: A Novel

by Betty Corrello

Sickness has a way of making you aware of every dimension of yourself; I swear I can feel the difference between tissue and bone. I’ve never felt more 3D than when I hurt.

Maybe I’m not afraid to fall asleep, but—worse yet—for all those months, I’d been afraid of being awake.

“It feels like there are some people—me and you—that no matter what, we’re always gonna be on the outside. Even if we do everything right, we’re always going to feel wrong. And it becomes this self-fulfilling prophecy. We feel so lonely and then we make ourselves unreachable. We realize we’ll never be enough. We’ll never be everything for everyone. Or we’ll never be the right person for our right person. So . . . so, you just said fuck it. And I guess I did, too.”