Too many locks, not enough keys.

Because you can never go from going out to being friends, just like that. It's a lie. It's just something that people say they'll do to take the permanence out of a breakup. And someone always takes it to mean more than it does, and then is hurt even more when, inevitably, said ‘friendly' relationship is still a major step down from the previous relationship, and it's like breaking up all over again. But messier.

So many versions of just one memory, and yet none of them were right or wrong. Instead, they were all pieces. Only when fitted together, edge to edge, could they even begin to tell the whole story.

But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end.

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.

The only thing I can't stand more than seeing something done wrong is seeing it done slowly.

The health of the people I love is all that really matters in this world. Period.