She bought seeds and raided nurseries and mulched and composted and spent full days with her hands full of earth, coaxing life our of the dry, dull grass my father had spent years pushing a mower over.

But the bottom line is that, as humans, we are by nature selfish creatures. The only way we care about anything, really, is by making it about us.

But you only get so many do-overs in this life, so many chances to, if not change your past, alter your future.

I wanted to be somewhere else ... Someplace where the sight of me sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.

People get mad Annabel. Its not the end of the world.

After all, it's all kinds of things that make up a life, right? The big, like falling in love and spending time with your family, and the little....like blow drying your hair, applying concealer, and cursing those magazine inserts. It all counts. It has to.

In my group of friends, I was always the one who remembered everything. The stories, the boys my friends and I dated, all the details. So I think a part of me was always filing them away, although at the time I wasn't sure why.