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The Usual Rules

by Joyce Maynard (Goodreads Author)

3.97 of 5 stars 3.97 · rating details · 800 ratings · 140 reviews

It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn—a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An...more It's a Tuesday morning in Brooklyn—a perfect September day. Wendy is heading to school, eager to make plans with her best friend, worried about how she looks, mad at her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, impatient with her little brother and with the almost too-loving concern of her jazz musician stepfather. She's out the door to catch the bus. An hour later comes the news: A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center. Her mother's building

Through the eyes of thirteen-year-old Wendy, we gain entrance to the world rarely shown by those who documented the events of that one terrible day: a family's slow and terrible realization that Wendy's mother has died, and their struggle to go on with their lives in the face of crushing loss.

Absent for years, Wendy's real father shows up without warning. He takes her back with him to California, where she re-invents a life that comes to include a teenage mother, living on her own in a one-room apartment with a TV set and not much else; her father's cactus-grower girlfriend, newly reconnected with the son she gave up for adoption twenty years before; a sad and tender bookstore owner who introduces her to the voice of Anne Frank and to his autistic son; and a homeless skateboarder, on a mission to find his long-lost brother.

Over the winter and spring that follow, Wendy moves between the alternately painful and reassuring memories of her mother and the revelations that come with growing to know her real father for the first time. Pulled between her old life in Brooklyn and a new one three thousands miles away, Wendy is faced with a world where the usual rules no longer apply but eventually discovers a strength and capacity for compassion and survival that she never knew she possessed.

At the core of the story is Wendy's deep connection with her little brother, back in New York, who is grieving the loss of their mother without her. This a story about the ties of siblings, about children who lose their parents, parents who lose their children, and the unexpected ways they sometimes find one another again. Set against the backdrop of global and personal tragedy, and written in a style alternately wry and heartbreaking, The Usual Rules is an unexpectedly hopeful story of healing and forgiveness that will offer readers, young and old alike, a picture of how, out of the rubble, a family rebuilds its life.
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Hardcover, 400 pages

Published February 28th 2003 by St. Martin's Press (first published 2003)

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Jun 03, 2011 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ahhh, off the chick-lit kick. i really need some variety. so i took out two books in a row about 9/11 (another topic of interest to me) and there were very different.

i liked this book a lot as it was a work of fiction. girl's mother works in the WTC and dies in the attacks. she lives with her step-father and half-brother, but after her mom dies, she goes to live with her dad in california for a while. people that help her heal come in and out of her life. a character i really liked that you usua...more

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Dec 01, 2010 Susy rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I've been interested in Joyce Maynard from the early 80's when her syndicated column about the mixed bag of being a writer/mom/wife appeared in the Sacramento Bee. It seemed so clear to me that she was torn between these roles so it was no surprise when I read she'd split up with her spouse & moved to Northern California. Now & again, she'd do a reading at our local book store but I never managed to read any of her novels. And then she appeared in conversation on the Goodreads site and I...more

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Sep 27, 2009 Mary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: young-adult

This is a Young Adults novel, which I didn't realize when I bought it, but I decided to give it a shot--and I'm glad I did. Unlke other books I've read whose main character is a young person--in this case a thirteen-year-old girl--I found Wendy to be entirely believable, and I really sympathized with her struggles and uncertainties. All of the characters were flawed but in normal, easy-to-relate-to ways, and there was an equal ammount of nobility to them. Just like real life! I especially liked...more

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Oct 20, 2010 Barbara rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Leah, Kelly, Chrissie

On a sparkling September morning, "Grace", the daughter of my dear friend of many years, joyfully boarded an airplane at Logan Airport in Boston. She was anticipating a trip to California before embarking on a new, exciting phase of her life. Her flight never reached its destination. It senselessly, inconceivably, madly struck the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. "Grace" was 32 years old. It was September 11, 2001, the day which deeply affected everyone. But what about those who lost l...more On a sparkling September morning, "Grace", the daughter of my dear friend of many years, joyfully boarded an airplane at Logan Airport in Boston. She was anticipating a trip to California before embarking on a new, exciting phase of her life. Her flight never reached its destination. It senselessly, inconceivably, madly struck the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York City. "Grace" was 32 years old. It was September 11, 2001, the day which deeply affected everyone. But what about those who lost loved ones? How does one continue the process of living even the daily routines? How can those of us who are unscathed by personal loss help others who have experienced this devastation?

Joyce Maynard has skillfully presented the emotion and pain in this poignant novel. The entire story relives the experience of a thirteen year old girl, Wendy, whose mother went to her office in the WTC on 9/11 and never returned. Maynard has sensitively portrayed this young girl, her family and friends. The desolation, grief, horror and sense of hopelessness are palpable. She captured the essence of the spirited, lovely mother, the incomprehension of Wendy's 4 year old brother and the deep mourning and disbelief of her step-father.

"In September, everything she loved,- songs on the radio and clothes and flavors of ice cream and leaf piles, roller coasters and skating... had melted away, not gone, maybe but this was almost worse: still there, but robbed of any capacity to give pleasure... like what happens when you mix all the wonderful colors of paint and it turns out that together what they add up to is brown." (p 227)

Wendy's journey to a semblance of healing coincided with her maturation. Along the way she found compassion and support from unexpected sources. One important character was Alan, the owner of a bookshop, who provided her with a willing adult ear, but most of all, books which supplied a form of therapy. She found solace in "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl" and Frankie in "Member of the Wedding".

"She lay there for a long time, reading and rereading that part and thinking about what it meant. She knew when she read the words that was how it had been for her after her mother disappeared- waiting for her to come back and coming to the slow, awful realization that she never would..." (p 227)

Initially I was hesitant to read this book. The experience of 9/11, the pain of my friend and the suffering of all of us following this horrifying event seemed sufficient. Joyce Maynard has written a haunting tale, tearful, but not maudlin, expressive and profound.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (less)

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Feb 01, 2012 Lisa rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Lisa by: Leslie Wilkins

Shelves: ya

This book is told from the perspective of 13-year-old Wendy, whose mother dies in 9/11. Not only is the narrative voice believable, but the depiction of grief is realistic and extremely well done. In addition to her own mourning, Wendy has a lot to deal with, like figuring out who she is and what she wants. Her journey is heartbreaking yet a testament to the power of the human spirit.

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May 06, 2012 Jiji rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jiji by: discovered it at my work place

I'm debating whether I should give this a 4 or 5 stars. I would say the references and the words were too simple but I have to keep in mind that this is told from the perspective of a 13-year-old. Since I wasn't in the States when 9/11 happened, I didn't know what it really was like (I didn't even know what happened until 2006, when I came here). Even after I found out what had happened, I still didn't truly understand until after reading this book.
My only problem with this book was that the ma...more

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Mar 30, 2012 Catherine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Almost put this down once I realized the subject - young girl coping with mother's death in the North Tower on 9/11. Too intense after the horrible conclusion of last book read - Beatrice and Virgil.

BUT...Joyce Maynard's precise and poetic writing and controlled handling of this difficult subject made this an extremely valuable read.

Thanks to her poignant portrayal of all the characters and the situations they confront, this book will remain in my heart and memory. And Joyce Maynard's name is n...more

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Jul 20, 2011 Gina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I thought that I would give this four stars until about two thirds of the way through, when I found myself annoyed by a situation involving a minor chararcter. She had given her son up for adoption and met him and his pregnant fiance for the first time more than 20 years later. The son and his wife are Christians, but are judgemental of his biologic mother when they meet her. I thought that the portrayal of the whole scene was unrealistic. With that said, I thought that the writing was good and...more

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Aug 23, 2011 Jackie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A little too long in the tooth story of a young girl's life after her mother is killed on Sep 11, 2001. She lives with her step dad and brother and has only had limited contact with her birth father...her mother never had much good to say about him. He shows up in New York one day about a month after her mothers apparent death and tells her she is going back to California with him. She reluctantly goes and weaves her way through her grief and confusion meeting some interesting folks along the wa...more

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Nov 12, 2009 Kdevoli rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am really enjoying this book. Even though the protagoniost is only 13, this author has a way of making adolescence resonate with adult readers. She did the same with her previous book that I enyoyed, Labor Day. In this one, the young girl in the center of the story loses her mom on September 11. She has a 4 year old brother as well, and this is the first 9/11 novel I've read that explores the issue from the point of view of the children affected. Very moving and gripping so far.
Update: Bravo....more

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Sep 19, 2009 Ken Bronsil rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Sometimes you go back to the same movie over and over again because you have become very emotionally involved in it, or you need the laughs it gives you, or for some other reason. The same with books, and this is one of them for me. Some laughs here--just when you need them. A huge lot of emotional involvement. This was my sixth reading of The Usual Rules.

Joyce Maynard depicts every character, major or minor, with insight and sensitivity. Descriptions, conversations, and narration are consistent...more

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Feb 24, 2012 Lois Duncan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A painful but well-written novel from the viewpoint of a 13-yr-old girl whose mother was killed during the attack on 9/11. I felt there was an over abundance of sub-plots, as the author tried to cover all bases by including every issue from blended families to autism to awakening adolescent sexuality to teenage motherhood to an adopted child finding and rejecting his birth-mother, etc. However, as I said, this book was very well-written and provided a credible portrayal of the profound grief tha...more

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Jan 19, 2011 Pepper Gerstner rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Another sad book....a little girl who lives in NY. Time frame is 9/11. Mom works at Towers.
I think because I experienced this event (via tv, not personally), I can relate to it so much more and really put the descriptions of happenings to the news reports I saw that day. It's amazing!
I have to put it down every once in awhile when reading it in a classroom--as I don't want to start crying over this little girl's tragedy. But definitely worth reading. My daughter is wanting to read it next. :)
Fi...more

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Apr 21, 2011 Heidi rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Since I don't read jacket covers, this book struck me like a brick when I realized it was set in Park Slope and deals with the day of and aftermath of a family who loses a member on 9/11/01. Nearly 10 years after the event, I was carried along with the author as she describes the insanity and the ordinary of that day and the days and months that follow. Narrated by a 13 year old girl, who is reading A Diary of Anne Frank in school when the World Trade Centers are struck, she takes us on an amazi...more

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Jul 31, 2011 Neill Smith rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wendy's parents have divorced and she lives in New York with her mother, stepfather, and a younger half brother. When her mother disappears in the aftermath of 911 she finds that the usual rules don't seem to apply any more so she moves to California to live with her estranged father. Her father gives her lots of space to find herself - so much so that it borders on neglect yet there is a warm connection there that helps her deal with her feelings while still maintaining a strong connection with...more

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Jan 15, 2010 Kerri rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I read this because it's the same author as "Labor Day" which I LOVED!

This one was good too, but nothing as super-fantastic and near-perfection as "Labor Day".

This is about a 13 year old girl whose mother dies in one of the Twin Towers on 9/11. It's really about the aftermath of that, and how to move on from that and somehow come out with an optimistic attitude about the world after such a devastating tragedy.

I wish this rating thing had 1/2 stars...It's not quite a 4 for me, but it's definite...more

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Nov 22, 2011 Joan Snodgrass Callaway rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Because my eyes keep flooding with tears I've been unable to finish the book at one sitting. What an accurate picture of the early stages of grief in both teenager and spouse. The book could have been written about any sudden death situation - I think she didn't need to tie it to 9/11 to make the same observations about Wendy's reactions to people and triggers.

Since It's an Ill Wind, Indeed...deals with the same issues, but without 9/11, I can barely wait to find out how Wendy manages the next...more

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Feb 10, 2012 Diana rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 9-11-01, awesome, historical-fiction, young-adult

I have never read a book was that amazing from the introduction to the acknowledgments. I remember where I was on September 11, 2001... I was walking out of my dorm, on my way to classes and I noticed people all around me were either crying or screaming looking at the television. I live in the South so even though we were in no immediate threat of danger, the air felt tense and still. I remember someone calling my cell phone saying they bombed the towers and I was like... what towers? I was so c...more

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Jun 20, 2011 Kim rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.
On 9/11, Wendy’s mother was at her job on the 86th floor of one of the World Trade Centers. Wendy, who is 13-years-old, along with her step-father and little brother, can only hold out hope that her mother will be found. As time goes by, it becomes apparent that this will not be the case.
The story is told through Wendy’s eyes and it is very heartbreaking to read of the emotions she goes through. Wendy adores her little brother and h...more This book was heartbreaking and heartwarming at the same time.
On 9/11, Wendy’s mother was at her job on the 86th floor of one of the World Trade Centers. Wendy, who is 13-years-old, along with her step-father and little brother, can only hold out hope that her mother will be found. As time goes by, it becomes apparent that this will not be the case.
The story is told through Wendy’s eyes and it is very heartbreaking to read of the emotions she goes through. Wendy adores her little brother and has a wonderful relationship with her stepfather. But she also feels has become a burden to him as he deals with his young son and the loss of his beloved wife. So when her father, whom she has rarely seen and her mother hated, shows up at the door one evening to tell her he is taking her back to California with him, she doesn’t put up much of a fight.
I thought the story got a lot more interesting once she reached California. She meets so many interesting people, does things she never would have done previously, and starts to develop a relationship with her father. She learns so much more about life in the time that she is with him. It really made me sympathize with her struggles and uncertainties about her life and the loss of her mother.
All of the characters just seem very realistic and reading about the hopelessness that Wendy felt when the world just seemed to go on without her mother was very believable. She keeps going back to times she was with her mother and feels a lot of regret over her behavior on many of those occasions. It was a very emotional story.
Though I thought the story was excellent, there were just a few things about it that kept me from giving the book 5 stars. The author does not use quotation marks and, in the beginning and few different places throughout the book, it would lose me and I would have to reread a part. Other than that, I really liked her writing style. And there were also a few spots in the book that I found rather drawn out and boring, but the story as a whole made up for that.
It was a very thought-provoking story. I guess I just never really thought about what it was actually like for children whose parents just never came home. I would really recommend it.
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May 27, 2011 Jan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to Jan by: Marilyn

Shelves: borrowed, family-drama

Like most Americans, I remembrt where I was on 9/11 and during the aftermath that followed. I shed many tears and said prayers for the victims and their families, the survivors. While I may have wondered, over the weeks and months that followed, how the survivors were coping, the feelings were absract, in general, relating to no one in particular. Maynard's story of Wendy and her family struck such a serve. My heart just broke for this child and her family. I find it difficult to believe these c...more

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Apr 28, 2008 Brandi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was pretty depressing and hard to cope with sometimes. My heart broke for the family multiple times and it was very hard to finish. In the end I was glad I did, but be warned, it was a tough read.

It's about a family (mom, dad, sister, and brother) whose lives were turned upside down on September 11th. The story is told from the perspective of 13 year old Wendy, who's struggling to come to terms with her teenage years. Her parents were divorced when she was younger and her mother has si...more This book was pretty depressing and hard to cope with sometimes. My heart broke for the family multiple times and it was very hard to finish. In the end I was glad I did, but be warned, it was a tough read.

It's about a family (mom, dad, sister, and brother) whose lives were turned upside down on September 11th. The story is told from the perspective of 13 year old Wendy, who's struggling to come to terms with her teenage years. Her parents were divorced when she was younger and her mother has since re-married a wonderful man. She is starting to resent her mother for not letting her visit her father in California, the reader knows it's for her own good, but Wendy only thinks her mother is being mean. As she leaves for school on the morning of 09/11/01 she screams "I hate you!" out of frustration at her mother. Little does Wendy know that in a few hours her mother’s building will be struck in a terrorist attack on the US, and that she will never be able to tell her that she doesn’t mean it, and how much she really loved her.

The story is an emotional rollercoaster. At first the family is in denial and thinks there is still a possibility their mother is alive. It's heartbreaking to hear from a New Yorkers perspective what happened on 09/11. Thousands of families plastered "Missing" posters all over the city. There was no closure for weeks, months, years, for the families of the missing people.

Wendy and her step-dad and little brother Louie are trying to come to terms with their loss when Wendy’s dad shows up one day to take her to California with him. Wendy doesn’t know what to do and decides that California might be a good change of pace. While she’s there she realizes how much she misses her family and friends in New York. On the same hand, she slowly rebuilds her relationship with her father, and makes a few new friends along the way.

Overall a good book, but don’t be surprised if your heart breaks a little too. You will probably also feel like calling your mother to tell her you love her.(less)

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Feb 17, 2008 Mike rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. Another 9/11 book, about a kid's personal tragedy.

I'll cop to finding the novel's tearjerking often effective, meaning there are moments quite moving, quite well-defined; Maynard's central adolescent is quite believable. The book doesn't just stack the weepy decks, though, it beats you about the head and neck with the deck--traumas pile up like a who's who of after-school special "problems" (autism, child abuse, teen pregancy). At almost 400 pages, a very exacting and thorough 400 pages, you ki...more Another 9/11 book, about a kid's personal tragedy.

I'll cop to finding the novel's tearjerking often effective, meaning there are moments quite moving, quite well-defined; Maynard's central adolescent is quite believable. The book doesn't just stack the weepy decks, though, it beats you about the head and neck with the deck--traumas pile up like a who's who of after-school special "problems" (autism, child abuse, teen pregancy). At almost 400 pages, a very exacting and thorough 400 pages, you kind of wish that her plotting was as finely wrought as her rather delicate, subtle attention to emotion.

Now step back: besides the trauma of losing a parent, why did this have to take place on/in relation to 9/11? There is an astonishingly complete absence of world politics; the one stray mention of terrorists is quickly repressed by the protagonist (who didn't want to think of them). To some degree, I buy that; if you're going to accept, as one character put it, that 9/11 "happened to me," you can be ceded some room to be focused on that self's smaller, more intimate world. But nothing? No mention at all of the larger, outside world? (Instead, the protagonist reads Carson McCuller and Anne Frank, and--though this reading gets scant attention--Patrick McCabe's Butcher Boy.) The novel plays up a sense of the ahistorical teenage trauma. (Holocaust & 9/11 disappearing into the internal landscape of the mourning teen, learning to be her self, emotionally, sexually, etc.) That ... well, honestly, that bugs the crap out of me. It seems an easy pitch, particularly since so very, very MANY 9/11 books exploit the grief or trauma of children as neat ways to have our narcissism and eat it, too; these books all too often are simply enactments of an infantilized response to 9/11 endemic in America.

(My goodreads friend Marshall noted that Jess Walter's The Zero is pretty good. It is, and it has a son who grieves his father's death in 9/11. But the catch is the father ain't dead, but all the other people in the kid's life think it's good for him to work through that grief, take it quite seriously.... Walter's book, and Ken Kalfus' excellent Disorder Peculiar to the Country, are rejoinders to the broader cultural narcissism of 9/11-grief.)

So I give this book a couple of stars for doing what it does with some measure of skill, and then complain about the limits of that skill and the even more aggravating limits of that ambition.

And I see some reviewers here call it a YA novel. Interesting; my hardcover isn't marketed nor labelled as such. (less)

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Apr 12, 2009 Christina rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: high-school-and-up

Once I got used to the lack of quotation marks, I liked this book. The first part, which focused on thirteen year-old Wendy's grief over the loss of her mother in the World Trade Center on September 11, drew me in immediately. I especially liked the chapter in which she finds herself attending the funeral of a firefighter she didn't even know. The second part, in which Wendy abandons her life in New York to live in California with her biological father, didn't quite measure up to the first. None...more

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Aug 22, 2010 Tara rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

The beginning of the book I found it very hard to connect with the main character, Wendy. She had lost her mom on 911 and was reeling from her loss, I could not understand her recklessness. As I kept reading I began to fall in love with this 13 year-old child who believed in the good of everyone. I just sat and read the last 100 pages crying and praying for this young girl. She is an amazing character and really made the book for me. I think she will stick with me for a while.

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Nov 07, 2009 Ashe rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

I didn't expect to like this book, but I did. While I read it a long time ago, it's always stuck with me as one that I liked. It tells the story of a girl living with her mother and step-father. After her mother dies in the 9/11 attacks, she moves to live with her biological father and befriends people she meets while she's there. One thing about the book that caught me off guard is the lack of parentheses... sometimes you can't tell who's saying what. Either way, it's still worth reading.

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Sep 03, 2009 Nian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009

It's very reminiscent of Oskar Shell, but still beautiful and touching. I seriously did cry a few times whilst reading it; particularly the flashbacks that concerned her mother, although it's hard to imagine someone seemingly perfect as her. Obviously, the mother and daughter had fights, but it seemed like the mother always redeemed herself at the last minute. Now, juggling from my experiences with my mom, I doubt that's the case: she can't make up for every fight we had.

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Jan 19, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

Outstanding. This is the only fiction novel I know of that has dared to tackle the issue of the September 11 attacks. Joyce Maynard has written a provacotive and surprisingly uplifting story of a thirteen-year-old girl who loses her mother on that awful day. The aftermath of her mother's death leads to chain of events that both strengthens and changes her life forever. Not only does this novel do the victims and their families justice it ranks high among the classic coming of age stories. Highly...more

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Jan 28, 2012 Toni rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction, historical-fiction

Joyce Maynard has written a lovely story of the aftermath of that horrible event in September 2001 that changed the world forever. Using a young teenage girl whose mother was lost in one of the towers, the author effectively offers a glimpse of how a family copes and survives a tragedy beyond comprehension. She tells us of the light that remains after a season of darkness and the spring that follows even the coldest kind of winter.

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Sep 26, 2010 Cherie rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was gripping. My son has been through two tragedies this year where a child died. I feel at a loss as to how to help him, it's so painful. Seeing how this 13 year old girl and her interesting family dealt with the loss of their mother/wife in the World Trade Center on September 11, helped me see how you can, with time, get through a life changing event. It is hopeful, I loved it.

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Oct 20, 2009 Acasia added it · review of another edition

I liked this book... We read it in my 9th grade English class... I didn't like the end... I wish we knew what Josh thought... I also didn't like that they didn't use person first language... That made me upset...

I thought it had a good meaning... and I liked the characters... I liked how they were so different... but they all meant the same thing to Wendy... She was always looking at a mother-child relationship... I also liked where she ended up... again, I wish that we knew how Josh felt... I

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About Joyce Maynard

Joyce Maynard first came to national attention with the publication of her New York Times cover story “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life” in 1973, when she was a freshman at Yale. Since then, she has been a reporter and columnist for The New York Times, a syndicated newspaper columnist whose “Domestic Affairs” column appeared in more than fifty papers nationwide, a regular contributor to NPR...more

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Quotes from The Usual Rules

“You just want to give up, he said when he was able to speak. Only you keep going. You still have to get up in the morning and pour the cereal in the bowls. You keep on breathing, whether you want to or not. Nobody's around to tell you how it's supposed to work. The usual rules just don't apply anymore.

He was still talking, but she wasn't even sure if it was to her.

When it started, he said, I thought nothing could be worse than those first days. And it wasn't only us, but everyone else you'd see, wandering around like they'd landed on a whole different planet. Instead of just dealing with your own heart getting ripped into pieces, wherever you looked you knew there were other people dealing with the same thing. You couldn't even be alone with it. Like you're out in the ocean and the undertow catches you and you start yelling for help, but then you look around, and all around you in the water for as far as you can see, there's all these other people flailing too.

He sat there for a moment, shaking his head.

You keep getting up in the morning and knowing this will continue maybe ten thousand more mornings. You wish you were the one who died.

How much better would that be?” — 6 people liked it

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