"I hope I'm not speaking out of turn but I think you sell yourself short sometimes. I don't think you truly realize how great you are. You have that "thing" that great people have but you don't see it because you are so humble. You excel at everything you put your mind to. You have to see, that in the grand scheme of things, you sit amongst the upper echelon of quality humans. Take that for what it's worth and maybe keep that in mind the next time you're selling yourself. You only have so many heartbeats." —M.C.

"You do sound really fucked up, but (wait, wait, wait) guess what: anyone pouring their heart out to a friend will always sound fucked up. Know why? Because we're all fucked up, my dear. We've just all mastered the art of appearing not-fucked-up along with everyone else, even knowing everyone's just as fucked up as we are. What a quote that is! You can put that on my tombstone,...which I'll never have anyway because being buried makes my skin crawl. Sounds so much worse than being burned to ash, right? Or is that a fucked-up presumption? Who created the rules for this place anyway? Oh, that's right: countless fucked up human beings over the course of history."

"When you said this… 'I know so many parents stay together for the kids but as your son gets older, he'll begin picking up on this stuff, on the fact that you and her are not in love, that it's a marriage of convenience and practicality, that you put on a show, and there's deception and hurt there. I would hate if that was your son's first true example of what love is.' 

…my heart broke." —M.C.

"You didn't mislabel me a dreamer. I am very much a dreamer. I fear you misunderstood what I was saying. Love is THE most important thing in my world as well. Everything else can suffer as a result. My happiness begins and ends with love. I would follow this man through the depths of hell for his love. I would be miserable in every other way for his love. His love alone is my happiness. That's never a sacrifice I'm willing to make, but that's what I have with him. I have passion and love...and happiness. I have raw animal sex with him. I write him poetry and letters and passionate rallying cries dripping with pain and emotion and intensity that he returns. And we have happiness too. My soul feels content in ways it never has before."

"Adam told me before I left that he feared that, for me, happiness was a moving target. You said in an email above that 'dreamers like you and I are never truly happy because this world is brimming with reality.' While there is some truth to both statements, I'm here to tell you that there is a kind of happiness out there that is possible, that the happiness you've written off as never-attainable is attainable. It's a cautious/guarded happiness, the kind that worries you and makes you scared because you never know when it'll retreat, the kind you never let yourself get used to because you know it won't last forever so you must always be ready for the drop back to the darkest corners of the earth, but it exists if you're brave enough to look for it."

"Rarely do I encounter someone so fearless and raw. I'm starting to remember why I was so fucking drawn to you back then." —M.C.

"Some heartbreaks are never full mended. They become a part of us and our story, until we forget entirely who we were without them. You don’t really ever get that kind of advice; that that deep emotional pain never dissipates entirely, that we’re forced to make peace with that pain, to learn how to live with it for the duration of our short lives in something of a reluctant surrender. I wish I had something more hopeful to share. I carry every past heartbreak around with me, including my decision to leave you and our life together. Sometimes the memories, both good and bad, can still bring me to tears. Sometimes the realization that the man who has been by my side for the last half of my life, who’s shared every moment of my life both good and bad, and is no longer there is devastating. Every inside joke, every “Remember when…,” every little thing that was ours…where do those things exist now? Are they still there, waiting silently to awaken between us?"