We could have been happy. I know that, and it is perhaps the hardest thing to know.
I love. The most reckless thing of all.
Does loving someone mean you want them to be safe? Or that you want them to be able to choose?
Caring about anyone leaves you vulnerable.
Being a teen is past for me. Worrying about the world and my place in it is not.
I want to reach out and grab his hand and hold it to me, right over my heart, right where it aches the most. I don’t know if doing that would heal me or make my heart break entirely, but either way this constant hungry waiting would be over.
Teens find out a lot from other teens.
And I laugh at myself for thinking I could touch the sky.
Theres nothing like reading about a world that feels dead to throw your own beautiful, colorful life into sharp relief.
The beauty of dystopia is that it lets us vicariously experience future worlds – but we still have the power to change our own.
I had really great parents who always gave me lots of opportunity for choice, but I didnt always realize how rare that was for a girl for them to say, You can be a mom or have a career or do both or do something we havent thought of yet.
When we read dystopia, we root for these people to break free because we are these people; hoping and fighting against things that are bigger than ourselves.
Do you think you could let someone go if you thought it was best for them?
And it is strange that absence can feel like presence.
I’m just a butterfly, a mourning cloak, sealed inside a cocoon with blnd eyes and stiky wings. And suddenly I wonder if the cocoons sometimes do not open, if the butterfly inside is ever simply not strong enough to break through.
There is ebb and flow. Leaving and coming. Flight and fall. Sing and silent. Reaching and reached.
In a story, you can turn to the front and begin again and everyone lives once more. That doesn’t work in real life. And I love my real people the most.
Because I feel no anger toward my mother. Only loss, and loss is a feeling you can’t fight your way out of as easily.
There is something extraordinary about the first time falling.
Reading the situation correctly is part of getting through it safely.