What you need, what you deserve, is a guy who adores you for what you are. Who doesn't see you as a project, but a prize. you know?

Maybe we were all destined to just keep doing the same stupid things, over and over again, never really learning a single thing.

That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about.

but accepting help doesn‟t have to mean giving up control.

Teaching was great for me, because I got to show people how writing can really change the way you see not only yourself but the world.

From this distance, in the dimness, the model looked surreal, made up of parts filled with buildings, bordered by long stretches of empty space. It reminded me of the way cities and towns look when you are flying at night. You can't make out much. But the places where people have come together, and stayed, are collections of tiny lights, breaking up the darkness.

I wasn't sure what I expected her to do or say to this. It was all new to me from that second on. But clearly, she'd been there before. It was obvious in the easy way she shrugged off her bag, letting it fall with a thump onto the sand, before sitting down beside me. She didn't pull me close for a big bonding hug or offer up some saccharine words of comfort, both of which would have sent me running for sure. Instead she gave me nothing but her company, realizing even before I did this that this, in fact, was just what I needed.