I do have friends, but they don't know me, only someone I've created to take my place. Someone sculpted from ice. I keep the melted me bottled up inside. Where no one can touch her, until, unbidden, she comes pouring out.

I feel like a goddess, jailed in her Olympus. Little wonder how the gods toyed with humans. Toyed with women, to watch them squirm, pollinate the seeds of despair; toyed with men, to satiate their Seven Deadly Sins.

Memory is a tenuous thing. . . . flickering glimpses, blue and white, like ancient, decomposing 16mm film. Happiness escapes me there, where faces are vague and yesterday seems to come tied up in ribbons of pain. Happiness? I look for it intead in today, where memory is something I can still touch, still rely on. I find it in the smiles of new friends, the hope blossoming inside. My happiest memories have no place in the past; they are those I have yet to create.

Living means taking chances. Risks. Playing safe all the time is being dead inside, even if you happen to still be breathing.

You can turn your back but you can never really walk away.

This time when we kiss, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel it in my heart. And I realize love isn't about sex. It's about connection.

I mean, if you're gonna purposely lose your mind, you want to get it back some day. Don't you? Okay, maybe not.