I thought of the cool, fresh air of the city I'd always dreamed of living in. The art museums and trolleys and the mysterious fog that blanketed it. I could almost smell the cappuccinos I'd planned to drink in Bohemian cafés or hear the indie music in the bookstores I would spend my free time in. I pictured the friends I'd make, my kindred art people, and the dorm room I was supposed to move into.

— Heather Demetrios

I've never been somewhere I belonged, but there are places where I think I could be happy. Like San Francisco. Well, do art museums count? Because I feel like I belong in them.

— Heather Demetrios

Look at this beautiful world!

— Heather Demetrios

My eyes roved over the walls covered with my collages and prints of famous paintings. Magritte, Kandinsky, Kahlo. My origami shapes hung from fishing wire, dangling over my bed. They shivered in the slight breeze blowing through my open window. It was my own little escape pod, but none of it was enough tonight.

— Heather Demetrios

My life was being planned in sentences that started with 'We' instead of 'I', yet it felt like the most natural transition in the world.

— Heather Demetrios

She is a slave, with no way home.

— Heather Demetrios

Somehow, the pain and rage and confusion of the past eighteen years dissolves until all that is left is this one perfect moment; unscripted, unedited, it's ours and ours alone.

— Heather Demetrios

Sometimes it was hard to breathe, knowing how small my world could be. Maybe in San Francisco it wouldn't feel like the universe was conspiring to keep me in a bubble.

— Heather Demetrios

The past is past. You tried to kill yourself. So what? I humped a couch in season twelve. We all have our skeletons.

— Heather Demetrios

This, I think, is a little glimpse of what life could be like without my family. Home could be a place of laughter and love, a refuge. I'm filled with a terrifying weightlessness, like I've jumped off a cliff, but I know that if I don't look down, I'll be just fine.

— Heather Demetrios