She used to cry roughly three times a year. Now she seemed to cry three times before breakfast. Could that be considered progress?

Lena knew she had spent too much of her life in a state of passive dread, just waiting for something bad to happen. In a life like that, relief was as close as you got to happiness.

You just have to let people love you in the way they can

Love demands everything, they say, but my love demands only this: that no matter what happens or how long it takes, you`ll keep faith in me, you`ll remember who we are, and you`ll never feel despair.

Relief is a short-lived emotion, passive and thin. The agony of doubt disappears, leaving little memory of how it really felt. Life aligns behind the new truth.

A loving soul was always more beautiful over the long haul, but actual prettiness was fleeting.

I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.