Impulse

Love means holding on to someone just as hard as you can because if you don't, one blink and they might disappear...forever.

Act on your impulse, swallow the bottle, cut a little deeper, put the gun to your chest.

Grandma once told me it's easy to overthink love, to dissect it and question it until it is no more.

Wish you could turn off the questions, turn off the voices, turn off all sound. Yearn to close out the ugliness, close out the filthiness, close out all light. Long to cast away yesterday, cast away memory, cast away all jeapordy. Pray you could somehow stop uncertainty, somehow stop the loathing, somehow stop the pain. Act on your impulse, swallow the bottle, cut a little deeper, put the gun to your chest.

One foot in front of the other, counting tiles on the floor so I don't have to focus the blur of painted smiles, fake faces.

Memory is a tenuous thing. . . . flickering glimpses, blue and white, like ancient, decomposing 16mm film. Happiness escapes me there, where faces are vague and yesterday seems to come tied up in ribbons of pain. Happiness? I look for it intead in today, where memory is something I can still touch, still rely on. I find it in the smiles of new friends, the hope blossoming inside. My happiest memories have no place in the past; they are those I have yet to create.

It [death] chokes you, gags you, but you have to pretend that you're doing just fine, not trembling with this fear because the end is close.

Too much to take in, too much to purge. Why must every memory, once sweet, dead end in such ugliness?

You believe this is a game, and you may be right. But if you think you can play it better than me, think again.

My happiest memories have no place in the past; they are those I have yet to create.

Now that I have opened that bottle of memories they're pouring out like wine, crimson and bittersweet.

Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment.

I'd sleep outside naked in the blizzard,for you.

Everyone's afraid of everybody else...maybe because we're all afraid of ourselves.

I mean, if you're gonna purposely lose your mind, you want to get it back some day. Don't you? Okay, maybe not.

I tattered their wings and tore off their legs, joint by joint, watched them crawl in circles, like little lost infants, untill they decide to die.

TRIAD: Three separate highways intersect at a place no reasonable person would ever want to go. Three lives that would have been cut short, if not for hasty interventions by loved ones. Or Fate. Three people, with nothing at all in common except age, proximity, and a wish to die. Three tapestries, tattered at the edges and come unwoven to reveal a single mutual thread.

The truth is, I don't have a real clue what love is - how to find it, how to give it. Once upon a time I thought I knew.

And the thought of that makes me want to open a vein, experience pain, know I'm alive, despite this living death.

Standing Here My entire world far beneath my feet, I should be filled with pride. Instead, I feel overwhelmed by a sense of defeat. Suddenly it comes to me, toes tempted to test the ledge, that there is a way out of this. Clam surety flows through my veins, and as I turn to wave good-bye, I wonder if it will hurt or if a single person will cry at my funeral. I take a deep breath, a final taste of sweet mountain air. I conjure Leona, Emily. Move my feet closer. Closer There's Grandma One, Grandma Two, and their spouses, waiting for me. I see Dad. Cara. Mommy. I screw up my courage, step over

As the old saying goes, "sometimes loving someone means letting them go.

But then, my entire life is bullshit. The best things in it have vanished, ghosts. Ghosts I'll admit I created.

I wonder how long it would take him to realize I'm right as sin - it's the rest of the world that's wrong. I'm not even sure how I qualify for admission to Aspen Springs. Does wanting to die equal losing your mind?

Grown up? Me? I suppose I have. Killing things, and almost killing myself, must have changed me some, after all.

But Hey, Guess What Crazy means I'm not liable for my actions. So screw it, I'll go home, propped up on Prozac against distractions

It was the exact opposite for me. At first all I wanted was sex with her, but soon I wanted more. More sex, yes, in unusual places, and all different kinds. But that wasn’t all. I wanted her to fill the empty spaces left by a father who never once praised me, ‘friends’ who used me, an ice princess mom who raised me with glass kisses.

No, of course not. But surely you know your affair couldn't go on forever." "Forever has no meaning when you're living in the moment and I wasn't ready for that moment to end.

It is hard to believe that something that seems so permanent was once so different. Change. I guess that really is one thing you can count on...

Freedom is a double-edged ideal, because true freedom comes without the protection of laws that also enslave us by defining us--female, male; Christian, Islamic; good, evil. All at the whim of a frail minority.