You leave the phone on beside you as you fall asleep. I sit in my bed and listen to your breathing, until I know you are safe, until I know you no longer need me for the night.

I suspected that what happens in hotel rooms rarely lasts outside of them. I suspected that when something was a beginning and an ending at the same time, that meant it could only exist in the present.

We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual. A—” “Do I really have to find a word for it?” Kyle interrupts. “Can’t it just be what it is?” “Of course,” I say, even though in the bigger world I’m not so sure. The world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own. We pause for a moment. I wonder if that’s all—if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, “You see, I don’t know who I’m supposed to be.” “Nobody does,” I assure him.

I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces. I have learned to observe, far better than most people observe. I am not blinded by the past or motivated by the future. I focus on the present because that is where I am destined to live.

Because that's the thing about mean people: They make you think that the world will never work, that there are divides that you will fall into if you approach. It takes a whole lot of good people to fill in the breach created by a single mean one.

Feeling someone else's anger is bad; being left alone is worse.

being with someone for over a year can mean that you love them … but it can also mean you’re trapped.