My discomfort is probably clear to him, but as long as I don’t verbally resist, his mind can justify his behavior and allow him to look past all of the other signals that this is not what I want.

His kind words are still fresh in my mind as I return to work, but I can’t help but think of how I stepped around that man without shelter.

Deep down, I knew I was gay; I had known from several years of having crushes on boys, my obsession with Selena Gomez, and how excited I got when I got to wear make up in a school play in junior high. Despite the fact that I knew I was gay, I couldn’t be gay in a religious environment, toxic thoughts followed me wherever I went.

Like a symphony of mortar, the hole gets bigger the more they try to love.

I knew he was supposed to be in my life, but the memories of him are like faint shadows pouring through a frosted window, distorted and evanescent. I never see his face in clear detail. His voice is lost to me, and for some reason that hurts me more than anything else.

I got so worried if you even liked me that I forgot I didn’t like you. I didn’t like you at all.

‘Of the dead, [say] nothing but good.’ It’s bad advice, though. Instead, speak truthfully of the dead: the bad and the good. It’s the only way to be true to ourselves, because there is enough good and bad in all of us for a lifetime of stories.

This is you: raising your glass at a party, or so I was told, and laughing with my friends, toasting the end of alimony–its taste, bitter and bilious in my mouth, I was just as eager to spit it out, wipe it away.

Whether or not someone had sex in high school becomes an unimportant fact when you spend your days changing diapers. You realize that it never really mattered to begin with. Everyone ends up in such ordinary places, regardless of hookups in movie theaters or on parent’s beds.