Leila Sales

Sometimes you get everything you ever wanted, only it doesn't look like what you wanted anymore.

I had never killed myself before, so I had no idea what would I want to listen to when it was too late for me to skip to the next song. Like, maybe when you're dying, you actually want to hear something really upbeat.

Throughout it all, you are still, always, you: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that - just you - enough?

You think it's so easy to change yourself. You think it's so easy, but it's not True, things don't stay the same forever: couches are replaced, boys leave, you discover a song, your body becomes forever scarred. And with each of these moments you change again, your true self spinning, shifting positions - but always at last it returns to you, like a dancer on the floor. Because throughout it all you are still always, *you*: beautiful and bruised, known and unknowable. And isn't that - just you - enough?

Tonight the Internet seemed filled with versions of me, like a fun house filled with mirrors. Some of them made me look prettier, and some of them made me look uglier, and some of them chopped me right in half, but none of them were right.

This wasn't how I imagined things going. But imagination is so often no match for the absurdity, the randomness, the tragedy of reality.

Sometimes people think they know you. They know a few facts about you, and they piece you together in a way that makes sense to them. And if you don't know yourself very well, you might even believe that they are right. But the truth is, that isn't you. That isn't you at all.

I believe that a person's taste in music tells you a lot about them. In some cases, it tells you everything you need to know.

History doesn't intend to have some particular emotional value, or any particular moral. History doesn't have any intentions at all. It's just a never-ending web of events that can have pretty much any meaning at all. But we, in retrospect, make this web into a story that makes sense. We superimpose onto it a beginning, middle, and end. We decide who the main characters are, the good guys and the bad guys. We decide what the moral of the story is, and how everyone is supposed to feel about it.""But history is facts," I said. "It's not a matter of opinion.""To a certain extent," Dad granted. "The facts matter, to a certain extent. You can't create a story without some facts to base it on. But what 'really happened' doesn't matter. What matters is how we agree to remember it.

If you're going to have the tortured soul of an artist, then you might as well create some art while you're at it.

Why did you do this?" He was shaking. "Just tell me why."I tried to muster up some of the righteous indignation that I'd felt on Friday night as I said, "You knocked over my gravestone!" But even to my ears the words sounded tinny and pathetic.Dan's face was pale. "It was just a gravestone, Chelsea. And it was a mistake. I told you that already, and I meant it. I've never lied to you. My God, can't you tell the difference between a gravestone and a person you love? Can't you tel which one matters?"But if I had to point to the real problem in my life, it's that I've never known the difference between a gravestone and a person I love. I have never known which is which until it's too late. "All's fair in love and war," I reminded him, aiming for Tawny's tone. But my voice came out sounding just like me."Oh, yeah? And which is this?" he asked. "Love or war?

People are who they are and, try as you might, you cannot make them be what you want them to be.

You may wonder how I managed to make these friends. Well, I will tell you. Making friends is actually not that hard when you drop every single one of your standards.

I didn__ know. I feel sometimes like_there are all these rules. Just to be a person. You know? You__e supposed to carry a shoulder bag, not a backpack. You__e supposed to wear headbands, or you__e not supposed to wear headbands. It__ okay to describe yourself as likeable, but it__ not okay to describe yourself as eloquent. You can sit in the front of the school bus, but you can__ sit in the middle. You__e not supposed to be with a boy, even when he wants you to. I didn__ know that. There are so many rules, and they don__ make any sense, and I just can__ learn them all

Sometimes you just have those days where everything goes wrong. But sometimes, and totally unexpectedly, something can go right.

That's the problem with life. You never get enough time to stare at your ceiling and try to figure out what's going on.

In Bio last year, I learned that blood is actually a dark maroon when it's inside your body. It's the exposure to oxygen that turns it bright red. And there must have been a lot of oxygen in my bathroom, because that blood was bright, bright red.

Nobody is so busy that they can't make time for the people they really care about.