Always Only You (Bergman Brothers, #2)

by Chloe Liese

Books help me feel a bit more connected to a world that often is hard to make sense of. Books are patient with me. They don’t laugh at me instead of with me. They don’t ask why I’m “always” frowning, or why I can’t sit still. Books welcome me—weirdness and all—and take me exactly as I am.

Have you ever started out crying for one thing and found yourself crying for so much more by the time you really get going? That’s what happens to me sometimes. That’s what happens now.

Crying because I miss feeling safe in my home already. Crying because I’m hurting, and I’m tired of hurting. Crying because when shit happens, I want my sister, my mom, my grandmother, and they’re an entire country away. Crying because I need my dad, and he’s not here, and he never again will be. Crying because I miss my dog. Crying because this break-in scares me and makes me feel vulnerable, and I work very hard not to feel that way.

Because I know that having arthritis, being autistic, does not make me less whole or human. It doesn’t make me wrong or broken. It makes some things in my life more challenging in ways, yes, and maybe I don’t represent the “norm,” but I can be someone who surmounts obstacles without it meaning there’s something fundamentally lacking in my makeup.