Depression is pain in its purest form.

The moment you tell someone else is the moment you become a whiner and the world’s smallest violin starts to play. The truth is, we all have problems; we all go through hardships and pain, and my pain is paradise compared to a lot of people’s and I really have no right to whine at all.

There was no logic or any sense of purpose except that I knew I had to do something other than what I was doing, or I might not make it through this.

Parents have this twisted belief that anyone under the age of about twenty simply can’t know what love is, like the age to love is assessed in the same way the law assesses the legal age to drink. They think that the ‘emotional growth’ of a teenager’s mind is too underdeveloped to understand love, to know if it’s ‘real’ or not.

I’m not a follower. I never have been. But I’ll definitely become someone I’m not for a few hours if it’ll make me blend in rather than make me a blatant eye sore and draw attention.

Everybody starts out as strangers.

His face spreads into a warm smile. “As a matter of fact, no, I have never slept under the stars – are you gettin’ all romantic on me, Camryn Bennett?” He looks at me with a playful sideward stare.