I looked at the sweatshirt again. "'You swim' is a philosophy?" He shrugged. "Better than 'you sink', right?

I paused, only just now realizing that the subject was hitting a little close to home. "You know, getting hurt. Putting herself out there, opening up to someone." Yeah," he said adding some cheese straws to the cart, "but risk is just part of relationships. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't." I picked up a box of cheese straws, examining it. "Yeah," I said. "But it's not all about chance, either.

Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.

You can't love anyone that way more than once in a lifetime. It's too hard and it hurts too much when it ends.

And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn't just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.

That was the thing about being alone, in theory or in principle. Whatever happened - good, bad, or anywhere in between - it was always, if nothing else, all your own.

Growing up means :propelling yourself forward into whatever lies ahead, one turn of the wheel at a time.