And without Dex in my life, I like to think I could have somehow found contentment. But the truth is, I feel freer with Dex than I ever did when I was single. I feel more myself with him than without. Maybe true love does that

It was about grace, she decides, something that has been missing from her own life. ... She wants to be the kind of person who can bestow unearned kindness on another, replace bitterness with empathy, forgive only for the sake of forgiving.

The whole "misery loves company" thing never applies more than when you're breaking up. The thought that the other person is doing fine is simply too much to bear.

Maybe that's what it all comes down to. Love, not as a surge of passion, but as a choice to commit to something, someone, no matter what obstacles or temptations stand in the way. And maybe making that choice, again and again, day in and day out, year after year, says more about love than never having a choice to make at all.

There are two kinds of sorry. There is the sorry imbued with regret. And a pure sorry. The kind that is merely asking for forgiveness, nothing more.

Things are what they are and there's no point dwelling in the past or wondering what could have been.

Which always raises the interesting question of whether redheads pursue other redheads in a narcissistic way, or simply, because they have no other choice, as nonredheads aren't interested.