There's no time to hold grudges when you've seen how fragile things can really be.

I might have felt broken, but at the end of it all, I didn't allow myself to break.

But what's regret anyway? Regret, I am learning these days, is a lot of things. But mostly, it's a slippery seed of longing, of looking back and asking yourself why you didn't know better when the answers were so obvious all along.

There's no time to hold grudges when you've seen how fragile things can really be.

Eventually kids become grown-ups too, and from there, the world is whatever they choose to make of it.

There's always more than one path, and to think otherwise is what resigns you to fate.

I press my eyes shut and will the thoughts away. But they refuse to comply, and instead, they lodge themselves in the crevasses of my brain, poking out just enough that I know they're still with me, like a tiny splinter in your baby toe that gnaws away at you with every step you take.