Jess

“After all, a person is herself, and others. Relationships chisel the final shape of one's being. I am me, and you.”
― N.K. Jemisin, The Fifth Season

“I'm not what anyone thinks I am. I never was. I didn't have the mouth to put it into words, to say what was wrong, to change the things I felt I needed to change. And every day it was difficult, walking around and knowing that people saw me one way, knowing that they were wrong, so completely wrong, that the real me was invisible to them. It didn't even exist to them. So: If nobody sees you, are you still there?”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji

“As a grown woman, I would have said to my father that there are true things in this world observed only by a single set of eyes.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties: Stories

“They were keeping me alive in the sweetest way they knew how, you see.”
― Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji