Welcome to the free world. We give people the power to choose. They can even choose the wrong thing. Beautiful, isn't it?

At the same time I know that it’s not really their fault, at least not completely. I did my part too. I did it on a hundred different days and in a thousand different ways, and I know it. But this makes the anger worse, not better.

For a second, I feel a sense of overwhelming grief: for how things change, for the fact that we can never go back. I'm not certain of anything anymore. I don't know what will happen--

That is the strangest thing about the world: how it looks so different from every point of view.

This is not the person I wanted to become: Hatred has carved a permanent place inside me, a hollow where things are so easily lost.

It's a miracle I was able to get out of the house today. It's a miracle I'm even wearing pants, a double miracle I remembered to wear shoes.

I think of the quietness of Julian's voice as he said I love you, the steadiness of his rib cage rising and falling against my back, as we sleep.I love you, Julian. But the words don't come.