The official strategy is defensive pessimism, always.

I pause a second. He doesn't look at me the way Will, Christina, and Al sometimes do - like I am too small and too weak to be of any use, and they pity me for it.

I think that you are the liar!" I say, my voice quaking. "You tell me you love me, you trust me, you think I'm more perceptive than the average person. And the first second that belief in my perceptiveness, that trust, that love is put to the test, it falls apart." I am crying now, but I am not ashamed of the tears shining on my cheeks or the thickness of my voice. "So you must have lied when you told me all those things... you must have, because I can't believe your love is really that feeble.

I knew by the way he looked at her that he held her in a higher regard than he held even himself. No selfishness or insecurity kept him from seeing the full extent of her goodeness, as it so often does with the rest of us. That kind of love may only be possible in Abnegation. I do not know. My father: Erudite-born, Abnegation-grown. He often found it difficult to live up to the demands of his chosen faction, just as I did. But he tried, and he knew true selflessness when he saw it.

I shield my eyes from the sun to see her cold look—the expression I saw in my mind even before I looked at her. She looks older to me than she ever has, stern and tough and worn by time. I feel that way, too. “These people have no regard for human life,” she says. “They’re about to wipe the memories of all our friends and neighbors. They’re responsible for the deaths of a large majority of our old faction.” She sidesteps me and marches toward the door. “I think they’re lucky I’m not going to kill them.

I'll have to keep looking for more of them, more brief moments of freedom in a world that refuses to allow it.

It happened. It was awful. You aren't perfect. That's all there is. Don't confuse your grief with guilt.