~QUOTES~ III

• Forbidden to remember, terrified to forget; it was a hard line to walk.

• It is my belief... that the truth is generally preferable to lies.

• Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.

• If you love something but you can't own it just let it go, if it comes back to you it's yours, if it doesn't, it never was.

• It didn't feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I’d grown strong enough to bear it.

• As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget.

• Instead of shying away from the memories, I’d walked forward and greeted them.

• I was not allowed to think of him. That was something I tried to be very strict about. Of course I slipped; I was only human.

• Between pain and nothing, I’d chosen nothing.

• What was I doing? I should be running from this memory as fast as I could, blocking the image from my mind, protecting myself with the numbness I couldn't function without.

• Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.

• I wondered how long this could last. Maybe someday, years from now—if the pain would just decrease to the point where I could bear it—I would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best of my life. And, if it were possible that the pain would ever soften enough to allow me to do that, I was sure that I would feel grateful for as much time as he’d given me. More than I’d asked for, more than I’d deserved. Maybe someday I’d be able to see it that way.

• As if he’d never existed? That was insanity. It was a promise that he could never keep, a promise that was broken as soon as I’d made it.

• Pain sometimes has no expired date.

~QUOTES~ III