Stephen Chbosky

It's nice to have things to look forward to.

I just kind of put my feelings away somewhere after that.

I thought if I didnt take a break, I would do something even worse. Like yell or hang up the phone.

I know I should have been grateful because it was a very nice thing to do. But I wasn't grateful. I wasn't grateful at all. Don't get me wrong. I acted like I was. But I wasn't. To tell you the truth, I was starting to get mad.

I just reminded myself that she didn't say it mean. She wasn't making fun of me. She wasn't comparing. Or criticizing.

And she says she wants to expose me to all these great things. And to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be exposed to all these great things if it means that I'll have to hear Mary Elizabeth talk about all the great things she exposed me to all the time. I don't understand that. I would give someone a record so they could love the record, not so they would always know that I gave it to them.

I just wish that God or my parents or Sam or my sister or someone would just tell me what's wrong with me. Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense.

It's much easier not to know things sometimes.

I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

Once on a yellow piece of paper with green lines he wrote a poemAnd he called it "Chops" because that was the name of his dogAnd that's what it was all aboutAnd his teacher gave him an A and a gold starAnd his mother hung it on the kitchen door and read it to his auntsThat was the year Father Tracy took all the kids to the zooAnd he let them sing on the busAnd his little sister was born with tiny toenails and no hairAnd his mother and father kissed a lotAnd the girl around the corner sent him aValentine signed with a row of X's and he had to ask his father what the X's meantAnd his father always tucked him in bed at nightAnd was always there to do itOnce on a piece of white paper with blue lines he wrote a poemAnd he called it "Autumn" because that was the name of the seasonAnd that's what it was all aboutAnd his teacher gave him an A and asked him to write more clearlyAnd his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because of its new paintAnd the kids told him that Father Tracy smoked cigarsAnd left butts on the pewsAnd sometimes they would burn holesThat was the year his sister got glasses with thick lenses and black framesAnd the girl around the corner laughed when he asked her to go see Santa ClausAnd the kids told him why his mother and father kissed a lotAnd his father never tucked him in bed at nightAnd his father got mad when he cried for him to do it.Once on a paper torn from his notebook he wrote a poemAnd he called it "Innocence: A Question" because that was the question about his girlAnd that's what it was all aboutAnd his professor gave him an A and a strange steady lookAnd his mother never hung it on the kitchen door because he never showed herThat was the year that Father Tracy diedAnd he forgot how the end of the Apostle's Creed wentAnd he caught his sister making out on the back porchAnd his mother and father never kissed or even talkedAnd the girl around the corner wore too much makeupThat made him cough when he kissed her but he kissed her anyway because that was the thing to doAnd at three a.m. he tucked himself into bed his father snoring soundlyThat's why on the back of a brown paper bag he tried another poemAnd he called it "Absolutely Nothing"Because that's what it was really all aboutAnd he gave himself an A and a slash on each damned wristAnd he hung it on the bathroom door because this time he didn't think he could reach the kitchen.

We accept the love we think we deserve.