That’s the thing you never expect about grieving, what a competition it is.

It feels like the city is telling secrets down here, privy only to those who think to listen.

All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony.

Okay, maybe this was the meant to be: the universe I knew, loved nothing more than balance.

And now I am here, as alone as I've ever been. I am seventeen years old. This is not how it's suppose to be. This is not how my life is suppose to turn out.

Because that day with Willem, I may have pretended to be someone named Lulu, but I had never been more honest in my life. Maybe that's the thing with liberation. It comes at a price.

I know what I did to you was so wrong, but at the time it also felt so necessary to my survival. I don't know if those two things can both be true, but that's how it was.