I Need You to Read This

by Jessa Maxwell

And yet, being so lost, so incredibly rock bottom, comes with a kind of freedom if you are able to harness it. Isn’t there something almost delicious about being able to start fresh? It’s like that Janis Joplin song, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

It is surprisingly satisfying solving other people’s problems, she thinks. Much easier than fixing your own.

focusing on surviving makes it hard to know what direction you’re heading or if you are going anywhere at all.

I wonder if you are not missing your youth at all—being young is never as easy as we remember it—but rather the feeling of being true to who you are, of letting time stretch out in front of you in such a way that you don’t need to guard it or worry about its end. Or maybe you miss feeling hopeful.”

“You’re right,” Alex says, though part of her can’t help but think that she ended up dead.

Red flag!

The grisly scene where Francis Keen’s body was found by longtime editor Howard Demetri.

Hmmm

There are certain people who appreciate your vulnerability and certain people who will try to use it against you. But they can’t if you don’t let them.

You are not miserable because of your job but rather because you have made it the whole focus of your life.

Without slowing her pace, Lucy glances back, her cheeks glowing. “I’ll never understand why he would kill himself by jumping from the top floor. That’s never made sense to me.”

Excuse me?

To Francis. Hearts are not had as a gift, but hearts are earned.

She has done so much to escape what happened to her all those years ago now, but it is still with her. She is still locking doors and hiding. Will she ever be able to free herself from it, or will it lurk forever in her subconscious waiting to step out and torment her just when things seem to be going okay for a change?

WHAT WAS IT?!

You have to allow yourself to be vulnerable if you want to receive anything good this world has to offer.

We can never get back time—it’s one of life’s biggest tragedies but also one of its greatest motivators. If things were not finite, there would be no need to ever evaluate what is most important to us.

Sometimes it is easy to mistake hope for fear.

Alex doesn’t have time to make sense of it. Whatever the reason, her assistant is terrified of Howard Demetri.

How different Tom is, Alex thinks again. His seemingly recent interest in old literature. His curiosity about, well, everything.

I'm suspicious of Tom

It reminds Alex that danger is not always to be found in the places that seem most predisposed to it, that it often can be found in the places you least expect it.

This is what having no consequences looks like. She is a woman who will do whatever she can to get what she wants, knowing that she will get away with it. She will kill someone.