I mean, I wasn’t fine. I would be fine. But I wasn’t there yet.
Narrow-mindedness will only get you as far as Nowhere, and once you’re there, you’re lost forever.
Maybe it was enough, i thought, that i knew someone like him existed in this world. Maybe it was enough that our lives had merged and diverged and left us both transformed. Maybe it was enough to have learned that i love was the unexpected weapon, that it was the knife i’d needed to cut through the Kevlar i wore every day.
I lived in a really dark place. I wasn’t safe in my own mind. I woke up every morning hoping to die and then spent the rest of the day wondering if maybe I was already dead because I couldn’t even tell the difference.
You are not normal. You never have been, and you never will be. Embrace who you are.
Gone is the boy with the guns and the skeletons in his closet. These hands holding me have never held a weapon. These hands have never touched death. These hands are perfect and kind and tender.
Oh, you are in for a world of pain, bro. A world. Of. Pain.
I felt like crying. I felt like crying and screaming all at the same time, but i didn’t want to give in to feeling. I just wanted to push through this. I wanted to survive it with out losing my head.
To the world, she is formidable. To me? She is the world.
Ocean had given me hope. He’d made me believe in people again. His sincerity had rubbed me raw, had peeled back the stubborn layers of anger I’d lived in for so long. Ocean made me want to give the world a second chance.
Right now I feel certain that my imagination is much more dangerous than any of his truths.
I count everything. Even numbers, odd numbers, multiples of 10. I count the ticks of the clock i count the tocks of the clock I count the lines between the lines on a sheet of paper. I count the broken beats of my heart I count my pulse and my blinks and the number of tries it takes to inhale enough oxygen for my lungs. I stay like this I stand like this I count like this until the feeling stops. Until the tears stop spilling, until my fists stop shaking, until my heart stops aching. There are never enough numbers.
Hey,” he whispered. “Don’t do this, okay? Don’t give up on me. I’m not going anywhere.
Best to introduce yourself to patience now, so that it might find you when you call upon it later.
You’re a total catch.” “I know, right? I keep trying to tell people.
I think you’re wonderful.” “Wonderful, huh?” “Yep,” I say, and link my arm in his. “You’re smart and funny and kind and – ” “Handsome,” he says. “Don’t forget handsome.” “And very handsome.
Alice would choose to love herself, different and extraordinary, every day of the week.
I was stuck in another small town, trapped in another universe populated by the kind of people who’d only ever seen faces like mine on their evening news, and I hated it.
I’ve been here before, I tell myself. I’ve been lonelier than this, more hopeless than this, more desperate than this. I’ve been here before and I survived. I can get through this.
Be careful with that ,” I said, nodding at the paper, “because if you text me too much, you’ll have to marry me. It’s the rules in my religion.