I just have to be super strong when it comes to my work time. Shut the browser, ignore the email alerts, and just WRITE.

call it crazy, or just chicken salad. But within reason, or without it i was in it too.

And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way.

It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again.

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.

At every wedding someone stays home.

If there was a way to recognize something you'd never seen but still knew by heart, I felt it as I looked at his face. Finally, someone understood.