I took his wildness from him and tried to fold it into myself, filling up the empty spaces all those second place finishes left behind.

It's not always easy being her daughter.' I think,' she said, 'sometimes it's hard no matter whose daughter you are.

My mother has always been the point I calibrated myself against. In knowing where she was, I could always locate myself, as well. These months she'd been gone, I felt like I'd been floating, loose and boundaryless, but now that I knew where she was, I kept waiting for a kind of certainty to kick in. It didn't. Instead, I was more unsure than ever, stuck between this new life and the one I'd left behind.

Call it crazy, or just chicken salad.

As for me, I was just trying to get it right, whatever that means. But now I finally felt I was on my way. Everyone had a forever, but given a choice, this would be mine. The one that began in this moment, with Wes, in a kiss that took my breath away, then gave it back - leaving meastounded, amazed and most of all, alive.

Again, it occurred to me how weird it was to be permanent in a place that to everyone else was only temporary. Like I could never be sure if they were the ones who weren't real, or if I was.

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.