And you can't love, not fully, unless you are loved in return.

It's the rule of the wilds. You must be bigger, and stronger, and tougher. A coldness radiates through me, a solid wall that is growing, piece by piece, in my chest. He doesn't love me. He never loved me. It was all a lie. "The old Lena is dead." I say, and then push past him. Each step is more difficult than the last; the heaviness fills me and turns my limbs to stone. You must hurt or be hurt.

The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other...they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down.

We are all punished for the lives we have chosen, in one way or another.

I guess that’s just part of loving people: You have to give things up. Sometimes you even have to give them up.

There is only what you want and what happens. There is only grabbing on and holding tight in the darkness.

At a certain point your brain stops to rationalize things. At a certain point it gives up, shuts off, shuts down.