This is an ad for better help.

Welcome to the world.

Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly.

In it, you will find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings

and how to find happiness and peace of mind.

Thank you.

And have a nice life.

Unfortunately life doesn't come with an owner's manual.

That's why there's better help online therapy.

Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video or online chat.

Visit better help.com to learn more. That's better

H-E-L-P.com.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm the person I was born to be, if the life I've lived really is the one I was meant to, or if it's some half-life, a mutation engineered by loss, coupled together by the will to survive.

The day my father died, the child I was, disappeared, washed away by the turn of the tide.

From time to time I still catch glimpses of that boy,

swimming through warm water towards his dad in a crystal blue pool.

His father smiles as the boy wraps his arms and legs around him and holds him tight.

A seashell wind chime gently blows in the breeze. He can hear waves crashing somewhere through the hedges and over the dunes.

Many times I've wished I had a mark, a scar, a missing limb, something children could

have pointed at, at which adults could tell them not to stare.

At least then I wouldn't have been expected to smile and mingle, meet and greet.

They would have seen.

...