And the silence, it cuts me. The silence, it gores me,Spilling my blood as the rain falls on me.Excerpt from "Silence

If ever I was meant to love, my heart would beat for you,”Need not the Raven say to Crow beneath the winter’s howl.Excerpt from "The Raven and The Crow

And Death it calls as the stone crow breaks. Streaks of blood malform its face.Death becomes its withered eyes and the shadows whisper, “Lies.” Excerpt from "Lies

I slipped in and out of worlds that weren’t there. I wrote letters to fictitious characters. I was passing into catatonic states more times than not. It required a concerted amount of effort to keep myself here in this world. I was a runaway. I tried to slit my wrists. I was clinical, and I knew how to hide my condition.

My father had started counting every penny he put into me. Every dime. Every dollar. He couldn’t give me a gift or hand me food without telling me how much I took from him. How selfish I was. How much my existence cost him. I had decided that I was worth exactly a dollar and if my father had to choose between the dollar and me, he would choose the dollar. TV was far more valuable.

I’m going to kill you! I’m going to fucking kill you!”You can hear that only so many times before you believe it. During those times, I slipped into my worlds. The more I read, the more worlds came to me. I added a subterranean lake that was illogically bathed in moonlight to my list. Those worlds—that lake, the room with the onyx cats, and Ireland—they all became very real to me. Much more real than the life I lived where a monster threatened to kill me on the other side of the door.

Over the next eight years, music was the frequency I rode on to carry me through my darkest days.

It felt good being independent and I loved it. Space. That was something familiar to me. That was something I could understand. Before my first kiss, I prized my solitude and had learned to associate safety and security in isolation.

I learned my most priceless lesson of all from that place. I learned how to teach myself. ... Hand me a book and I could do anything.

As a child, all I saw were the monsters