You just had to know where to look.

Look, the point is there's no way to be a hundred percent sure about anyone or anything. So you're left with a choice. Either hope for the best or just expect the worst.

It was a basic plot in any number of her books: girl strikes out, makes good, finds love, gets revenge. In that order. The making good and striking out part I liked. The rest would just be bonus.

n the dark everyone felt the same: the edges blurred. When I think of myself then, what I was like two years ago, I feel like a wound in a bad place, prone to be bumped on corners or edges. Never able to heal.

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.

There were so many levels to the unknown, from safe to dangerous to outright nebulous, scariest of all.

It was like those songs I'd heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When i got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn't make me love them any less. By then they were already part of me, woven into my conciousness & memory