Sometimes the darkness lives inside you, and sometimes it wins.

__ don't want to lose you__hen why are you the one that keeps letting go?

The question stayed with me every day, through every class, through every Op. I felt its teeth tighten around the back of my neck each time I was dismissed without a second look; it had locked it__ jaws and wouldn__ let me or my conscience go.

I had the strangest feeling-like I had lost something without ever really having it in the first place-that i wasn't what I once was, and wasn't at all what I was meant to be.

I can't--I can't think about anything or anyone else," he whispered. A hand drifted up, dragging back through his hair. "I can't think straight when you're around. I can't sleep. It feels like I can't breathe--I just--""Liam, please," I begged. "You're tired. You're barely over being sick. Let's just... Can we just go back to the others?""I love you." He turned toward me, that agonized expression still on his face. "I love you every second of everyday, and I don't understand why, or how to make it stop--" He looked wild with pain; it pinned me in place, even before what he had said registered in my mind."I know it's wrong; I know it down to my damn bones. And I feel like I'm sick. I'm trying to be a good person, but I can't. I can't do this anymore.

Do you think the memory of someone should dictate how we live going forward?' he asks, threading and unthreading his fingers together.'It depends,' I say. 'I think you can probably honor someone's memory, but you can't live for them, because that means living in the past.