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"That I have experienced my share of traumatic experiences, have survived abuse of various kinds, have faced near death from accidental circumstance and from violence (different as the particulars of these may be from those around me) is not a card to play in gamified social interaction or a weapon to wield in battles over prestige. It is not what gives me a special right to speak, to evaluate, or to decide for a group. It is a concrete, experiential manifestation of the vulnerability that connects me to most of the people on this earth. It comes between me and other people not as a wall, but as a bridge."

“What will be the worst outcome, I wonder, when I get to the end of my journey? If I come to the heart of Eskew, and am told that all my suffering was only a test, and I have been found worthy, and I am led into some room where my hand is shaken and my back is patted and we all laugh about how it played on camera? I think it might be better to come to the heart, and learn the opposite; that my unworthiness was exactly what led me here, that this is punishment of a cosmic sort, and I will never be free, because I can never be better… That’s something to cling to. To revolt against.”

“In much of I Am In Eskew, I’m really working through my greatest fear; that what I’m hearing and seeing is not what other people are hearing and seeing.