Stephen Chbosky

I just want you to know that you__e very special_ and the only reason I__ telling you is that I don__ know if anyone else ever has.

My Aunt Helen was my favorite person in the whole world. She was my mom__ sister. She got straight A__ when she was a teenager and she used to give me books to read. My father said that the books were a little too old for me, but I liked them so he just shrugged and let me read.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

The fights are always the same

If you are in a movie theater, you can look two people down and they are laughing while you are laughing or you can look three people down and they love that song that you love. It is living proof that you are not alone.

I feel like a big faker because I've been putting my life back together, and nobody knows.

It's much easier to not know things sometimes. Things change and friends leave. And life doesn't stop for anybody.

Well, I think that part of being young is not exactly knowing why you do some of the things that you do. And it's by exploring your life or experimenting or making mistakes and learning from them hopefully that you start to forge an identity.

When you think back to your first kiss, your hair is perfect and she was wearing a cool outfit. We remember it with restraint and we remember it with style. We remember it as idealistically as you can think.

It__ strange how things can change back as suddenly as they changed originally. When one thing happens and suddenly, things are back to normal.

I wanted to laugh. Or maybe get mad. Or maybe shrug at how strange everyone was, especially me.

Then the movie started. It was in a foreign language and had subtitles, which was fun because I had never read a movie before.

Math has never made any sense to me.

Sam looked at me soft. And she hugged me. And I closed my eyes because I wanted to know nothing but her arms.

Then, I started running. And everything was as good as it could be.

But in that moment when my brother took the field, all that washed away, and everyone was proud... I looked up at my dad, and he was smiling. I looked at my mom, and she was smiling even though she was nervous about my brother getting hurt, which was strange because it was a VCR tape of an old game, and she knew he didn't get hurt.

My grandfather was crying. The kind of quiet that is quiet and a secret. The kind of crying that only I noticed. I thought about him going into my mom's room when she was little and hitting my mom and holding up her report card and saying that her bad grades would never happen again. And I think now that maybe he meant my older brother. Or my sister. Or me. That he would make sure that he was the one to work in a mill. I don't know if that's good or bad. I don't know if it's better to have your kids be happy and not go to college. I don't know if it's better to be close with your daughter or make sure she has a better life than you do. I just don't know.

Do you enjoy holidays with your family? I don't mean your mom and dad family, but your uncle and aunt and cousin family? Personally, I do. There are several reasons for this. First, I am very interested and fascinated by how everyone loves each other, but no one really likes each other. Second, the fights are always the same.