Bribes are the glue that's kept teenagers and parents connected for generations

There were signs. Probably more of them than I ever caught, even after the fact. But I missed them all. Maybe because I wasn’t looking for them. I was too busy checking over my shoulder at the fire I’d just come through to pay much attention to the thousand-foot cliff looming in front of me.

It's the same thing that happens when I turn off a really good movie - one that I've lost myself to - which is that I'll be thrown back to my own reality and something hollow will settle in my chest. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie all over again just to recapture that feeling of being inside something real. Which, I know, doesn't make any sense.

I know that unlike that night, tonight I won't kiss her. Or touch her. Or even see her up close. Tonight, I'll listen. And that'll be enough.

Losing me will hurt; it will be the kind of pain that won't feel real at first, and when it does, it will take her breath away.

Doubt is part of searching. Same as faith.

But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it's frozen shut.