1.
As the light begins to intensify, so does my misery, and I wonder how it is possible to hurt so much when nothing is wrong.
Tabitha Suzuma
2.
I might appear confident and chatty, but I spend most of my time laughing at jokes I don't find funny, saying things I don't really mean - because at the end of the day that's what we're all trying to do: fit in, one way or another, desperately trying to pretend we're all the same.
Tabitha Suzuma
3.
I want to tell her that I can't pull her down. I want to tell her that she has to let go of my hand in order to swim. I want to tell her that she must live her own life. But I sense she already knows that these options are open to her. And that she, too, has made her choice.
Tabitha Suzuma
4.
But then why is it so terrible for me to be with the girl I love? Everyone one is permitted to have what they want, express their love as they please, without fear of harassment, ostracism, persecution, or even the law. Even emotionally abusive, adulterous relationships are often tolerated, despite the harm they cause others. In our progressive, permissive society, all these harmful, unhealthy types of "love" are allowed--but not ours.
Tabitha Suzuma
5.
At what point do you give up - decide enough is enough? There is only one answer really. Never.
Tabitha Suzuma
6.
...and my loneliness, always my loneliness - that airless bubble of despair that is slowing stifling me.
Tabitha Suzuma
7.
They say when you really love someone, you should be willing to set them free. So that is what I am doing. I will step back and you will move on. I will let you go. ... Your happiness means everything to me. I will listen for your voice in the distance. I will look at the moon. I will keep you in my pocket. I will carry your smile with me everywhere, like a warm and comforting glow.
Tabitha Suzuma
8.
Out of the millions and millions of people that inhabit this planet, he is one of the tiny few I can never have.
Tabitha Suzuma
9.
Trying to describe my life and feelings to you is like trying to describe coulours to the blind, or music to the deaf. It's simply not possible.
Tabitha Suzuma
10.
I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you of all people. Throughout my life you were the one person I could turn to. The one person I could always count on to understand. And now that I’ve lost you, I’ve lost everything.
Tabitha Suzuma
11.
At what point does a fly give up trying to escape through a closed window – do its survival instincts keep it going until it is physically capable of no more, or does it eventually learn after one crash too many that there is no way out? At what point do you decide that enough is enough?
Tabitha Suzuma
12.
Even though I'm surrounded by pupils, there is the invisible screen screen between us, and behind the glass wall I am screaming - screaming in my own silence, screaming to be noticed, to be befriended, to be liked.
Tabitha Suzuma
13.
At the age of five she has already come to terms with one of the life's harshest lessons: that the world isn't fair.
Tabitha Suzuma
14.
At the end of the day it's about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.
Tabitha Suzuma
15.
How can something so wrong feel so right?
Tabitha Suzuma
16.
It's always nice being wanted. Even if it's by the wrong person.
Tabitha Suzuma
17.
He shakes his head with a slow smile. You'd better be right. If the phone rings, I'm unpluggining it, I swear to God-“ You'd do that to your five-year-old sister?“ I gasp in mock outrage. For one whole night alone? Jesus, Maya, I'd sell her to the gypsies!
Tabitha Suzuma
18.
You've always been my best friend, my soul mate, and now I've fallen in love with you too. Why is that such a crime?
Tabitha Suzuma
19.
Lochie. The boy I once loved. The boy I still love. The boy I will continue to love, even when my part in this world is over too.
Tabitha Suzuma
20.
If I keep breathing, then I have to keep living, and if I keep living, then I have to keep hurting, and I can't - not like this.
Tabitha Suzuma
21.
Time has stopped; time is racing. Lochie's lips are rough yet smooth, hard yet gentle. His fingers are strong: I feel them in my hair and on my neck and down my arms and against my back. And I never want him to let me go.
Tabitha Suzuma
22.
This is the definition of happiness: a whole day stretching out ahead of me, beautiful in its emptiness and simplicity.
Tabitha Suzuma
23.
I mean, at the end of the day, what the hell does it matter who I end up with if it can't be you?
Tabitha Suzuma
24.
Get through today – you can fall apart tomorrow. Get through tomorrow, you can fall apart the day after . . .
Tabitha Suzuma
25.
I don't know when it started - this thing - bit it's growing, muffling me, suffocating me like poison ivy. I grew into it. It grew into me. We blurred at the edges, became an amorphous, seeping, crawling thing.
Tabitha Suzuma
26.
Do I realy regret that night? That one moment of joy beyond compare – some people never experience it in a lifetime. But the downside to that taste of pure happiness is that,like a drug, a glimmer of paradise, it leaves you craving more.
Tabitha Suzuma
27.
Never before have I imagined my life without him—like this house, he is my only point of reference in this difficult existence, this unstable and frightening world. The thought of his leaving home fills me with a terror so strong, it takes my breath away. I feel like one of those seagulls covered in oil from a spill, drowning in a black tar of fear.
Tabitha Suzuma
28.
She can't just be a face, a body; there has to be more than that, some kind of connection. And I can't connect, don't want to connect, with anyone.
Tabitha Suzuma
29.
Willa’s big blue eyes, Willa’s dimpled-cheeked smile. Tiffin’s shaggy blond mane, Tiffin’s cheeky grin. Kit’s yells of excitement, Kit’s glow of pride. Maya’s face, Maya’s kisses, Maya’s love. Maya, Maya, Maya . . .
Tabitha Suzuma
30.
But whichever form it took it brought with it, in those moments of bitter anguish, such a desperate surge of hope that it was almost untouchable, and flitted away like a golden butterfly into the bright blue sky - beautiful, unreachable and completely transistent.
Tabitha Suzuma
31.
only a matter of time before it broke through our fragile web of denial, forcing us to confront the truth and acknowledge who we are: two people in love – a love that nobody else could possibly understand.
Tabitha Suzuma
32.
There are no laws, no boundaries on feelings.We can love each other as much and as deeply as we want.No one, Maya, no one can ever take that away from us.
Tabitha Suzuma
33.
Family: the most important thing of all. My siblings may drive me crazy at times but they are my blood. They’re all I’ve known. My family is me. They are my life. Without them I walk the planet alone. Forbidden, Tabitha Suzuma
Tabitha Suzuma
34.
I've never seen anyone sleep with their head hanging off the back of a wooden chair before - was the couch not comfortable enough for you?
Tabitha Suzuma
35.
Pressed up against him, I can feel the thud of his heart against mine, his ribcase expanding and contracting rapidly against my chest, the warm whisper of his breath tickling the side of my neck, the brush of his leg against my thigh. Resting my arms on his shoulders, I pull back a little to get a look at his face. But he isn't smiling any more.
Tabitha Suzuma
36.
The words fire from my mouth like bullets, ricocheting off the walls before I can even register what I'm saying.
Tabitha Suzuma
37.
He is my soul mate, my fresh air, the reason I look forward to getting up every morning.
Tabitha Suzuma
38.
And this is something I must accept - even if, like acid on metal, it is slowly corroding me inside.
Tabitha Suzuma
39.
Any guy, even imaginary, would just feel like second best. Second best to what? I don't even have an image of the perfect boyfriend. I just know he must exist. Because I have all these feelings-love, longing, wanting to be touched, dreaming of being kissed-yet no one to focus them on.
Tabitha Suzuma
40.
Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.
Tabitha Suzuma
41.
And I know how he feels–it’s so good it hurts.
Tabitha Suzuma
42.
Anyway, what does mad mean exactly?" Rami added quickly "Aren't we all a little mad? Don't we have to be somehat mad just to go on living, to go on hoping?
Tabitha Suzuma
43.
I would give anything to escape myself, Flynn thought, just for a day, just for a minute even. Just to know what it was like to think differently, to feel differently, and to not be me.
Tabitha Suzuma
44.
But I don't want to be fine, not if it means she's going to let go of my hand; not if it means we're going to go back to being polite strangers.
Tabitha Suzuma
45.
Otherwise I'll fall apart. I'm going to fall apart. I am falling apart.
Tabitha Suzuma
46.
This whole time, my whole life, that harsh, stony path was leading up to this one point. I followed it blindly, stumbling along the way, scraped and weary, without any idea of where it was leading, without ever realizing that with every step I was approaching the light at the end of a very long, dark tunnel. And now that I've reached it, now that I'm here, I want to catch it in my hand, hold onto it forever to look back on - the point at which my new life really began.
Tabitha Suzuma
47.
And the very important fact that I'm here to worry with you and go through all of this - every little bit of it - by your side, even your worst-case-scenario, should it somehow come to that. You wouldn't be doing any of it alone.' Her voice drops and she looks down at our hands, fingers entwined, resting on her lap. 'Whatever happens, there will always be us.
Tabitha Suzuma
48.
I am overcome by a feeling of complete detachment. I am a mere object to these people. I am barely human any more.
Tabitha Suzuma
49.
You cannot undo the past; you can only learn to live with it, find some way of making peace with it, and move on.
Tabitha Suzuma
50.
How-how can we make it against the whole world?
Tabitha Suzuma