You're not supposed to have it all figured out in high school. If you knew it all, and it was the best, it's all downhill from there.

I spent a lot of time looking at that picture. Wondering what I’d think of that girl, if I was someone else, seeing how easily she sits in her boyfriend’s lap, laughing, with his arms around her. I would have thought her life was perfect, the way I once thought Cass’s was. It was too easy, I was learning, to just assume things.

Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.

I wasn't ready for this, but then I probably never would be, and this year, like so much else, wouldn't wait. I had no choice but to get out of my car, with everyone watching and begin in earnest, alone. So I did

You just had to know where to look.

But as i lay there, it only seemes like silence filling my ears. And the thing was, it was so freaking loud.

Holding people away from you, and denying yourself love, that doesn't make you strong. if anything, it makes you weaker. Because you're doing it out of fear.