Seek the tarnish and you shall find

If you hold a bird too tightly, you'll crush its wings

Mine are the deep-seated fears established when we are children, and they never quite go away: the fear of being helpless, the fear of being trapped, the fear of being out of control.

Time doesn't heal scars as most people commonly think. It simply makes them firmer, stiffer. One must accept it and not hope to mend and return to what he or she once was.

It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like the sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. 'Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine.' Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic.

I don't think she's ever coming back.

What is normal? Normal is only ordinary; mediocre. Life belongs to the rare, exceptional individual who dares to be different.