Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face.

And of course, the answer came to me in the same way Jesus comes to those who drink in trailers: as an epiphany.

You need to grab your dream out of the sky like it's a kite and pinch the string through your fingers until you reach the spool.

Love is a helium-based emotion; Love always takes the high road.

For exactly the same reason, it is sometimes satisfying to cut yourself and bleed. On those gray [sic] days where eight in the morning looks no different from noon and nothing has happened and nothing is going to happen and you are washing a glass in the sink and it breaks - accidentally - and punctures your skin. And then there is this shocking red, the brightest thing in the day, so vibrant it buzzes, this blood of yours. That is okay sometimes because at least you know you're alive.

I could write another collection of personal essays from what has happened to me in the last year alone. I don't seek out my material - it finds me. I am magnetic, somehow.

Any damage that's been done, you have to fix yourself because it needs fixing and there is nobody else to do the work. Blame may well be justified, but it's not going to move you forward in your life.