We wish we could have been there for you. We didn't have many role models of our own--we latched on to the foolish love of Oscar Wilde and the well-versed longing of Walt Whitman because nobody else was there to show us an untortured path. We were going to be your role models. We were going to give you art and music and confidence and shelter and a much better world. Those who survived lived to do this. But we haven't been there for you. We've been here. Watching as you become the role models.

If I'm not telling you something, it's for a reason. Just because you trust me, it doesn't mean I have to automatically trust you. Trust doesn't work like that.

To love--to fall--is not a question. To touch--to kiss--to speak--those are questions.

I am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me.

exemplar, n. It's always something we have to negotiate- the face that my parents are happy, and yours have never been. I have something to live up to, and if I fail, I still have a family to welcome me home. You have a storyline to rewrite, and a lack of faith that it can ever be done. You love my parents, I know. But you never get too close. You never truly believe there aren't bad secrets underneath.

I am here because of love.

Family, like arsenic, works best in small doses...unless you prefer to die.