It is not brave to prefer being alive.

It is only sane.

The tragedy was never that I was dying; everyone is dying, on a long enough clock.

The tragedy was the twenty-two years I spent not living, and the small miracle at the end was that I got even a little while back — a season of mornings in which I was awake, and present, and myself, and the coffee was exactly right.

Chapter 11 — Reclaiming My Name

I went back to my own name.