Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go. Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness.

It's amazing how words can do that, just shred your insides apart. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me - such bullshit.

I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.

Things would get difficult again. But that was okay too. The bravery was in moving forward, no matter what.

The reason you can never go home again isn't necessarily that places change, but people do. So nothing ever looks the same.

The rules of Panic are simple. Anyone can enter. But only one person will win.

My heart shoots into my throat every time I think I see his loping walk, or catch sight of some floppy brown hair on a boy - but it's never him, and each time it isn't, my heart does a reverse trajectory down into the very pit of my stomach.