Amy Reed

Imagine trying to live without air.Now imagine something worse.

The first week is the hardest. Then little by little the world opens up, and you realize there are all these people around you with their own needs that have nothing to do with you. Then you forget, and everything__ about you again. And maybe that cycle continues for the rest of your life. Maybe the world keeps expanding and contracting. Maybe you know you__e well when it finally stays the same size.

Getting rid of the drugs doesn__ get rid of all the other ways you learned to deal with the world. It__ not that easy.

Your boyfriend smells bad, says Sarah as she sniffs the armpit of the giant sweatshirt.All boys smell bad I say and she nods her head like we have just figured out something very important.

Shirley: "Christopher, would you like to tell Olivia what "F.I.N.E" means?"Christopher: "Fucked-up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional"...Olivia: "But what if you really do feel fine?"Shirley: "Christopher, care to answer that?"Christopher: "Um, there's no such feeling as fine.

There is a whole other world with an entirely different version of me, a me that is not pretty, a me that no boys want, a me she would never talk to.

They said the doctors could tell from the scars.""Stop.""Scars can tell you how old the wound is.""Stop.""When I stopped going to school, they came and found me. They found me in the closet.""Sarah.

I__ feeling really hopeful about it, like maybe I actually have a chance to get better. To be happy. It__ funny, I just realized that my whole life, the whole time I__e been trying to be perfect, I never once considered happiness as part of the equation. I guess it seemed so impossible I couldn__ even let myself fantasize about it. But now, I don__ know, things feel different somehow. Like impossible things might not be so impossible.

I don't know if anyone can ever really explain why they believe in someone. But I do. I believe in you. I hope that's worth something.