And I wondered if hurdlers ever thought, you know, 'This would go faster if we just got rid of the hurdles.

But what could I lose by continuing that had not already been lost?

I didn't even know what the feeling was, really, just that there was a lot of it.

The truth is that in our lives we are all going to encounter questions that should be answered, that deserve to be answered, and yet prove unanswerable.

Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go. And here's to me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou

But that wasn't quite right. I called it a nine because I was saving my ten. And here it was, the great and terrible ten, slamming me again and again as I lay still and alone in my bed staring at the ceiling, the waves tossing me against the rocks then pulling me back out to sea so they could launch me again into the jagged face of the cliff, leaving me floating faceup on the water, undrowned.

And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future—you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.