Still Life with Tornado

The absence of violence is not love.

nothing about her pain is remotely original —and yet it still hurts

Pretty much nobody on Earth takes me seriously. And yet, on the inside I know there is something wrong enough that someone should be taking it seriously. Maybe it starts with me. Maybe I have to take it seriously first.

It's like I'm a little me inside the big me and I'm holding an umbrella and the rain is bullshit and I am the rain and I am the bullshit.

Even though I know that breaking your brain is the same as breaking your arm, I'm still ashamed that my brain is broken.

You can't change people with love. It doesn't work that way.

Then they fake smile at each other, but I’m starting to understand that smiling is really just another way of baring one’s teeth.

Sarah. Sarah. Sarah. I can't get away from myself.

I'm sixteen years old and this is the main idea the adults in my life have given me. Whether it's seaweed in Mexico, missing art projects, or Dad shrugging, the message is clear: The older people get, the less they can do about things.

I am the barrier between the bullshit that falls from the sky and the humans who do not want bullshit on their pantsuits. In eight days of riding around, that's what I've discovered. It's raining bullshit. Probably all the time.

But who’s to say what’s stupid and what’s not stupid when your life falls apart? Some people fall apart over TV shows. Some people fall apart over a breakup. Some people fall apart over someone eating the last bowl of Apple Jacks. I fell apart because of the annual art show. No one noticed I was falling apart before then. I

People pleasers make the best victims. I see it all the time at work.

I am as blank as a piece of white paper in a world with no pencils.

Look. This isn't a temper tantrum. I'm not some teenager you can blow off because you made a myth about teenagers being dramatic.

So why are you skipping school? Can you tell me that?" "Nothing ever really happens," I say. "Meaning?" "Meaning nothing original or new ever really happens and school is just a place where we all pretend like we're new and original and we're not. We're all the same.

There is something in the room with us. It's familiar. It's a feeling I've known my whole life but never talked about. It's an invisible man or monster under the bed. History. That's what it is. History is in the room with us. You absorb it even if it's not happening right in front of you. You absorb the feeling of it. It's there even though it's not there. It's in your skin.

I want a mission. Not someone else’s mission, either. I want my own mission. Something I think up myself. Something I actually want to do. Something that makes me jump up and down. •

I wish I could talk to twenty-three-year-old Sarah again. Ten-year-old Sarah doesn’t understand my struggle. She hasn’t come to this yet. She hasn’t come to the place where my present means nothing but my future is all everyone talks about. Twenty-three-year-old

Things are happening. Some of those things are original. Some of them happen every day. Some of them are art.

It's one thing to reach for a bottle and become a monster, a mean drunk, but it's another thing to have that bottle inside you. A rage organ.

Maybe she woke up. Maybe she's happier now.

My scars will tell stories until the day I stop breathing. Thick

If parents cared as much about raising kids as the chef cared about making this cake, the world would be a completely different meat grinder. Bruce can’t take a bite of his cake without

Frankly, I think they could have fast-tracked the whole thing. How did it take from 1590-something to 1890-something to improve on one of the best inventions ever? Three hundred years? That's way too long. What were they busy doing in that time? A few wars? Some genocide? Burning witches? None of that was worth ignoring the flush toilet.

Thick skin is a fallacy. The skin is an organ. It isn't just about pimples and freckles and sunburn and wrinkles. All skin is thick skin.