What boy my age didn’t dream of fleeing the well-tended lawn and lamp-lit street for the untamed wilderness, where grand adventure awaited on the other side of the horizon, where the stars burned undimmed in the velvet sky above his head and the virgin ground lay untrodden beneath his feet?

Tampons. I’m constantly worrying about my stash and if I’ll be able to find more.

A child has little defense against the sight of a parent laid low. Parents, like the earth beneath our feet and the sun above our heads, are immutable objects, eternal and reliable. If one should fall, who might vouch the sun itself won't fall, burning, into the sea?

A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails.

But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.

When the moment comes to stop running from your past, to turn around and face the thing you thought you could not face--the moment when your life teeters between giving up and getting up--when that moment comes, and it always comes, if you can't get up and you can't give up either, here's what you do: Crawl.

We are the clay, and you are Michelangelo. And we will be your masterpiece.