Such a strange thing, to hold a six-year-old's hand. Especially a six-year-old you've only just met. A toddler will grab hold of your finger, and someone your own age will clasp on to your whole hand, but with six-year-olds it's something in between, this acknowledgment that they can't be the one to take hold, so you have to do all the holding, folding your hand around theirs, feeling so much bigger and responsible.

instead i head to the computer and it's like i turn into a little girl who's just seen her first rainbow. i get all giddy and nervous and hopeful and despairing and i tell myself not to look obsessively at my buddy list, but it might as well be projected onto the insides of my eyelids. at 8:05 his name pops up, and i start to count. i only get to twelve before his IM pops up.

I’ve found that people tend to trust other people who dress like them.

It's goodbye to some things. And hello to others.

I felt like I was missing something. Missing you more. Missing whatever was going to happen next.

If smart people are parodying it, that's a sure sign that some less smart people are believing it.

..I've been trying to argue myself into thinking these things don't matter, A. Really,I have. But I've lost the argument. And I can't keep having it, when I know what the real answer is.