Are you ever afraid to go to sleep? Afraid of what comes next?” He smiles a sad little smile and I swear it’s like he knows. “Sometimes I’m afraid of what I’m leaving behind,” he says.

Through wind, and tempest, storm, and rain; The calm shall be buried inside of me; A warm stone, heavy and dry; The root, the source, a weapon against pain

Chance. Stupid, dumb, blind chance. Just a part of the strange mechanism of the world, with its fits and coughs and starts and random collisions.

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

Now I'd rather be infected with love for the tiniest sliver of a second than live a hundred years smothered by a lie.

He's stuck with me and I'm stuck with him. We're stuck. That's what growing up is all about, I guess.

Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed.