We both know the limits of this relationship. It's understood. And as long as we're both comfortablewith that, nobody gets hurt. It's basic.

And always remember how much your crazy sister loves you.

I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.

Really? Screaming?” He shrugged. “It wasn’t that bad. But there were definitely some freak-outs on both sides. Though, to be honest, the silence was worse.” “Worse than screaming?” I said. “Much,” he said, nodding. “I mean, at least with an argument, you know what’s happening. Or have some idea. Silence is… it could be anything. It’s just –” “So freaking loud,” I finished for him. He pointed at me. “Exactly.

It's so easy to get caught up in what people expect of you. Sometimes, you can just lose yourself.

I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.

But in the real world, you couldnt really just split a family down the middle, mom on one side, dad the other, with the child equally divided between. It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn't see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.