I Wanted To Tell Her That Being

... I Stayed Because Running Seemed Too Strange And Too Complicated. All I Knew Was How To Fall Back, Find A Patch Of Solid Ground, And Then Dig My Heels In And Fight To Start Over.

What I Am Telling You, Before You Begin My Story, Is This -- Two Things: I Crave Truth. And I Lie.

I Had Been Right: Freedom Smelled Like Ozone And Thunderstorms And Gunpowder All At Once, Like Snow And Bonfires And Cut Grass, It Tasted Like Seawater And Oranges.

But This Is What I Know About People Getting Ready To Walk Of The Edge Of Their Own Lives: They Want Someone To Know How They Got There. Maybe They Want To Know That When They Dissolve Into Earth And Water, That Last Fragment Will Be Saved, Held In Some Corner Of Someone's Mind; Or Maybe All They Want Is A Chance To Dump It Pulsing And Bloody Into Someone Else's Hands, So It Won't Weigh Them Down On The Journey. They Want To Leave Their Stories Behind. No One In All The World Knows That Better Than I Do.

I Love Writing. I Feel Ridiculously Lucky That This Is What I Get To Do All Day.