You can touch everything and be connected to nothing.

You can widen the feet of a compass, but they are still attached at the top; you can spin them away from each other, but you always wind up where you started.

At 17, the smallest crises took on tremendous proportions; someone else's thoughts could take root in the loam of your own mind; having someone accept you was as vital as oxygen. Adults, light years away from this, rolled their eyes and smirked and said, 'This too shall pass' - as if adolescence was a disease like chicken pox, something everyone recalled as a milk nuisance, completely forgetting how painful it had been at the time.

I think this is every mother's worst nightmare - something dreadful happening to her child.

So much of marriage was implicit and nonverbal. Had I gotten so complacent I'd forgotten to communicate?

But there's an enormous difference between an audience that's watching you because they can't wait to see what comes next and an audience that's watching you because they're waiting for you to fail.

It feels like a punch. Tears fill my eyes, and I wonder how I could be upset over losing something I never had.