All Representations Of A Thing Are Inherently

The Good Times And The Bad Times Both Will Pass. It Will Pass. It Will Get Easier. But The Fact That It Will Get Easier Does Not Mean That It Doesn’t Hurt Now. And When People Try To Minimize Your Pain They Are Doing You A Disservice. And When You Try To Minimize Your Own Pain You’re Doing Yourself A Disservice. Don’t Do That. The Truth Is That It Hurts Because It’s Real. It Hurts Because It Mattered. And That’s An Important Thing To Acknowledge To Yourself. But That Doesn’t Mean That It Won’t End, That It Won’t Get Better. Because It Will.

And Then We Were Kissing. My Hand Let Go Of The Oxygen Cart And I Reached Up For His Neck, And He Pulled Me Up By My Waist Onto My Tiptoes. As His Parted Lips Met Mine, I Started To Feel Breathless In A New And Fascinating Way. The Space Around Us Evaporated, And For A Weird Moment I Really Liked My Body, This Cancer-ruined Thing I'd Spent Years Dragging Around Suddenly Seemed Worth The Struggle, Worth The Chest Tubes And Picc Lines And The Ceaseless Bodily Betrayal Of The Tumors.

Ben Starling, You Better Not Have Bought Your Token Black Friend A Racist Shirt

And As Paralyzing And Upsetting As All The Never Agains Were, The Final Leaving Felt Perfect. Pure. The Most Distilled Possible Form Of Liberation. Everything That Mattered Except One Lousy Picture Was In The Trash, But It Felt So Great. I Started Jogging, Wanting To Put Even More Distance Between Myself And School. It Is So Hard To Leave—until You Leave. And Then It Is The Easiest Goddamned Thing In The World.

There Were So Many Of Us Who Would Have To Live With Things Done And Things Left Undone That Day. Things That Did Not Go Right, Things That Seemed Okay At The Time Because We Could Not See The Future. If Only We Could See The Endless String Of Consequences That Result From Our Smallest Actions. But We Can't Know Better Until Knowing Better Is Useless.