She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.

Listen,"Kristy said," the truth is,nothing is guranteed. You know better than anybody." She looked at me hard,making sure I knew what she meant.I did."So don't be afraid.Be alive.

But what he didn't understand was that this dreamland was preferable, walking through this life half-sleeping, everything at arm's length or farther away. I understood those mermaids. I didn't care if they sang to me. All I wanted was to block out all the human voices as they called me name again and again, pulling me upward into light, to drown.

Some writers pick a topic and write around that, but I like to include it all.

Doesn't it seem sometimes that the whole world's uphill but at least we know the way back will be easy.

I wondered which was harder, in the end. The act of telling, or who you told it to. Or maybe if, when you finally got it out, the story was really all that mattered.

Oh darling, don't be bitter. It's the first instinct of the weak.