How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid?

There's nothing I can't live with. Only things I won't live without.

Procrastinating is number three on my Stupid List. You still end up exactly where you didn't want to be, doing exactly what you didn't want to do, withe the only difference being that you lost all that time in between, during which you could have been doing something fun. Even worse, you probably stayed in a stressed-out, crappy mood the whole time you were avoiding it. If you know something is inevitable, do it and get it over with. Move on. Life is short.

Her absence in my life was so painful that it was a presence.

Some people fall apart when they get hurt. Puddle into apathy and despair and never recover. They wait all their lives for someone to come along and rescue them.

How dare the embodiment of her worst nightmare come packaged as her hottest fantasy?

There was no lifeboat here in these deep, killing waters, not even a lighthouse, marking the way back to shore with its soft amber promise. There was only the storm of Barrons and the one I seemed to be, and if there were dark shapes moving in the waters beneath my feet that I should probably take a good hard look at and possibly reconsider trying to swim here, I didn’t care.