Saint Anything

by Sarah Dessen

That’s the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.

I’d done the right thing. I always did. It just would have been nice if someone had noticed.

Happy, normal lives going on in happy, normal ways, in a world that was anything but. Once you realized this, experienced something that made it crystal clear, you couldn’t forget it. Like a face. Or a name. However you first learn that truth, once it’s with you, it never really goes away.

you do in your dreams is never your choice. But it made me happy anyway.

“There’s no shame in trying to make stuff work, is how I see it. It’s better than just accepting the broken.” I wanted to say he was lucky he even had a choice. That for most of us, once something was busted, it was game over. I would have loved to know how it felt, just once, to have something fall apart and see options instead of endings.

You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together. Mac

In any moment, there were so many chances for paths to cross and people to clash, come together, or do any number of things in between. It was amazing we could live at all, knowing all that could occur purely by chance. But what was the alternative?

You get used to people being a certain way; you depend on it. And when they surprise you, for better or worse, it can shake you to your core.

That was just it. You never knew what lay ahead; the future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.

One minute you’re walking through a dark woods, alone, and then the landscape shifts, and you see it. Something wondrous and unexpected, almost magical, that you never would have found had you not kept going. Like a new friend who feels like an old one, or a memory you’ll never forget. Maybe even a carousel.

We all need protecting, even if we don’t always know what from.