It's shocking the things we call love.

...wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another.

I could forget that part, but it had to have been true.

We hurt each other, is the point. Hurt, annoy, embarrass, but move on. People, it just doesn't work that way. Your own feelings get so complicated that you forget the ways another human being can be vulnerable. You spend a lot of energy protecting yourself. All those layers and motivations and feelings. You get hurt, you stay hurt sometimes. The hurt affects your ability to go forward. And words. All the words between us. Words can be permanent. Certain ones are impossible to forgive.

I would have spoken, had my heart not been in my throat

Too often in my life, love has been defined as "humiliation with occasional roses".

Stereotypes are fast and easy, but they are lies, and the truth takes its time.