“It was like that part of my life, was just gone. It was almost too easy, for something I once thought had meant everything.”

“I just thought to my self, all of a sudden, that we had something in common. A natural chemistry, if you will. And I had a feeling that something big was going to happen. To both of us. That we were, in fact, meant to be together.”

“I had this wild thought that he was the only one in all this chaos who was just like me, and that was comforting and profound all at once.”

“I felt something catch in my throat, a sudden surge of sadness that caught me unaware, almost taking my breath away. That was the thing. You never got used to it, the idea of something being gone. Just when you think it's reconciled, accepted, someone points it out to you and it just hits you all over again, that shocking.”

“Almost, I thought. Out loud I said, "Just because we don't see eye to eye on everything doesn't mean we can't be close.Auden”

“The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.”

“Was it really this easy, once you escaped, to just not care?”