That strange, twisted, torn love. That conflict between what your heart knows is right and what your mind is told is right.

and when he catches me off guard and says 'i love you' i catch him off guard and say 'i need your help.

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.

We didn't believe in fate, but we believed in serendipity. We felt very lucky.

You know there's no such thing as a complete lie. There's always some truth in there.

There's no way for them to take away my sadness, but they can make sure I am not empty of all the other feelings.

I had a sense then of how if we truly understood how many of the unimportant things we do will end up outliving us, we'd never be able to go on.