Once, she'd been a pro at decompressing, loved to sit on the back deck of the beach house in one of our splintery Adirondack chairs for hours at a time, staring at the ocean. She never had a book or the paper or anything else to distract her. Just the horizon, but it kept her attention, her gaze unwavering. Maybe it was the absence of thought that she loved about being out there, the world narrowing to just the pounding of the waves as the water moved in and out.

See for me, it’s immediate. Silence is so freaking loud.' This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasn’t sure which.

but you could also look at it the other way. Like you’re saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.

Harder to get in than out, like so little else.

its been a long night" "aren't they all?

I wasn’t ready to think about the other yet: that it wasn’t that I wasn’t right for Macon, but that maybe he wasn’t right for me. There was a difference. Even for someone who things didn’t come easy for, someone like me.

She tried to be someone people liked. She tried to be someone people disliked. But all I became was someone who didn't succeed with anything I tried to be.