“I wonder if, even after all of this, he understands how fragile good things are in my hands and how many times they've been taken away from me.”

“How does it feel to know that even at my worst, you're still not good enough?”

“I want to go into the sympathy card business. . . Forget sappy messages about overcoming. I want ones that say NOW YOU’LL BE A LESSER PERSON THAN YOU WERE or WE CANNOT POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND or I CAN UNDERSTAND BECAUSE SOMEONE I KNOW DIED TOO or maybe something about how grief can make your skin feel sore and bruised and electric because that’s how my skin has felt ever since, except for my hands.”

“I mean, you know how it is. You chase a bottle of sleeping pills with a bottle of Jack Daniel's and life's never the same, no matter how many times you try to tell people it was just an accident.”

“He tells me its going to be okay until all the words blur together into a hum that makes me close my eyes and I start to go away and five, ten, fifteen minutes later, I'm aware of my hand sliding down his lap and then nothingness and then the gentle sensation of his index finger pressing into my open palm and then his hand is at my face, running his fingers across my skin and I'm so awake.”

“When I found my dad, I knew things were going to change forever, but sitting next to her, getting ready to see my dad buried, I felt it in a different way. Everything ached.This reminds me of that - how it aches.But it's a better ache, too.I'm hopeful.I can't remember the last time I felt hopeful.”

“The thing no one tells you about surviving, about the mere act of holding out, is how many hours are nothing because nothing happens. They also don’t tell you about how you can share your deepest secrets with someone, kiss them, and the next hour it’s like there’s nothing between you because not everything can mean something all the time or you’d be crushed under the weight of it.”