In the end, though, I did not kill my sister. She did it all on her own. Or at least this is what I tell myself.

If you want to know someone's story, they have to tell it aloud. But every time, the telling is a little but different. It's new, even to me.

I could tell her from personal experience that when people we love make choices we don't always understand them. But we can go on loving them, just the same. It isn't a matter of comprehension. It's forgiveness. But all this took me a lifetime to discover, and where has it gotten me?... Some lessons can't be taught, they simply have to be learned.

By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them.

But love wasn't about sacrifice, and it wasn't about falling short of someone's expectations. By definition, love made you better than good enough; it redefined perfection to include your traits, instead of excluding them. All any of us wanted, really, was to know that we counted. That someone else's life would not have been as rich without us here.

You're unwilling to go out on a limb because it just might break underneath you.

How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war?