“flagrant, adj. I would be standing right there, and you would walk out of the bathroom without putting the cap back on the toothpaste.”

“ commonplace, adj. ... But then I'll walk into the bathroom and find you've forgotten to put the cap back on the toothpaste again, and it will be this splinter that I just keep stepping on.”

“antsy, adj. I swore I would never take you to the opera again.”

“Without you I wouldn't have been able to contain the hate. I would have used it against myself. You're the one who helped me control it. My mind spun out to other things.But it always came back to you.”

“incessant, adj. The doubts. You had to save me from my constant doubts. That deep-seeded feeling that I wasn't good enough for anything I was a fake at my job I wasn't your equal my friends would forget me if I moved away for a month. It wasn't as easy as hearing voices nobody was telling me this. It was just something I knew. Everyone else was playing along but I was sure that one day they would all stop.”

“Even when I detach, I care. You can be separate from a thing and still care about it. If I wanted to detach completely, I would move my body away. I would stop the conversation midsentence. I would leave the bed. Instead, I hover over it for a second. I glance off in another direction. But I always glance back at you.”

“When he talked to you, you seemed to fit in, but when someone else was talking, or he would be distracted, you jsut looked lonely over there. At least to me. But whenever I would tell you that, you'd say "I'm fine. I just slip out of it, you know?" And I'd say "I'll catch you," and you would say, "It's not the kind of slipping you can catch.”