When you say too much about anything important, it always ends up sounding more trivial than it is. Words trash it.

This is my new hobby. I watch my life depart minute by minute. I anticipate the end of everything and anything -- a conversation, a class, track practice, darkness -- only to be left with more clock-watching to take its place. I'm continually waiting for something better that never comes. Maybe it would help if I knew what I wanted.

Then again maybe there's something that I've been doing in the privacy of my own bedroom my whole life that I think is perfectly normal but is actually illegal in thirty-two states.

There's only one racing strategy that matters.It's the one I run by: Get in the lead and don't let anyone pass you.

Fortunately for me, I'm still evolving into the person I'm supposed to be. And though they don't know it yet, and may not come to accept it, I'm done living by their protocols or anyone else's. I'm the only one who will take credit for my successes. And I'm the only one who will take the blame for my mistakes. From now on, I live for me.

You called me a natural con artist and asked me what other secrets I was hiding. I didn't answer because I already knew, in some deep, primal way, what furtive truth you were referring to: That I was destined to fall in love with you.

I'm in crisis. I'm about to bump with a five-foot chino-chicano.