Real love finds you once, if you're lucky.

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

So when he asked about getting high, I didn't think, I agreed. We smoked some good California green. Took three tries to put me in the place he said I should be.

the not-so-bookish librarian was half angel, half she-devil, so sayeth the rumor mill.

Transformation Isn't easy when most of the people in your life think you're already perfect, and want you to stay just how they see you. Try to begin a new phase, you'd better expect push-back. Try to create a whole new you, your friend list will shrink considerably.

You have to realize there is nothing more you can do to convince someone you love to turn their life around. You simply have to say, "Look. I love you, but I cannot stand by and watch you kill yourself slowly. When you want help I'm here. Until then, goodbye." That may sound cruel, but self-preservation is paramount to helping someone else. If you're a wreck, you're useless to them, anyway. And if they refuse help, despite knowing the likely outcome, they will head down that path anyway.

Pretty That's what I am, I guess. I mean, people have been telling me that's what I am since I was two. Maybe younger. Pretty as a picture. (Who wants to be a cliché?) Pretty as an angel. (Can you see them?) Pretty as a butterfly. (But isn't that really just a glam bug?) Cliché, invisible, or insectlike, I grew up knowing I was pretty and believing everything good about me had to do with how I looked. The mirror was my best friend. Until it started telling me I wasn't really pretty enough.