The worst part was that I had things I wanted to tell my mother, too many to count, but none of them would go down so easy. She'd been through too much, between my siters-I could not add to the weight. So instead, I did my best to balance it out, bit by bit, word by word, story by story, even if none of them were true.

We didn't talk about our scars, the ones you could see and the ones you couldn't.

Times like this it did seem real I was leaving, and even more that my family, and this life, would go on without me. And again I felt that emptiness rise up, but pushed it away. Still, I lingered there, in the doorway, memorizing the noise. The moment. Tucking it away out of sight, to be remembered when I needed it most.

Love can make up for a lot.

I was actually kind of a hot mess in high school. I did a lot of things in high school I'm not proud of. I wasn't a good student and I wasn't particularly a good daughter. I wasn't very engaged.

Like life isn't complicated enough. You should at least be able to follow the signs.

This was how I was dealing with everyone and everything lately, taking the good when it came, and the bad the same way, knowing each would pass in its own time.