No guest rooms.” I shake my head resolutely. “I want to be in a room room. A lived-in room.

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.

like I am Alice in the Wonderland and have gotten too big for the room.

Everything looks stark and vivid and frozen, as though drawn precisely and outlined in ink - parents' smiles frozen, camera flashes blinding, mouths open and white teeth glinstening, dark glossy hair and deep blue sky and unrelenting light, everyone drowning in light - everything so clear and perfect I'm sure it must already be a memory, or a dream.

This is what we are made for: promises, pledges, and sworn oaths of obedience.

...into hate, into refusal, against hope and without fear

When you love someone, when you care for someone, you have to do it through the good and the bad. Not just when you're happy and it's easy.