Most of All You

by Mia Sheridan

my day-to-day existence: work, home, occasional trips into town where I interacted with few. I took comfort in the expected, found safe companionship in the books I read, and still found joy in my own freedom, but I also couldn’t deny that I led a lonely sort of life.

You can find hope in the strangest of places, in the darkest of corners. Clutch it close, my darling. It’s yours and no one else’s. Lemon Fair, the Queen of Meringue

Everything is going to be okay. Maybe not today, but eventually.

My mother had been a crier. She’d cried all the damn time, and what had it gotten her in the end? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The force of our connection shocked me, as if he had reached out and touched me in some way I didn’t understand, and had certainly never experienced before.

Don’t stop yourself from dreaming. Dreams are what keep our hearts alive.

If you’re not happy, just make a change. No problem. Easy peasy. Those were the conclusions of someone who had never really struggled,

Maybe it was the same reason I loved anything I loved: because it spoke to my heart and my soul.

My dad was quiet, a thinker. And my mom was this Chatty Cathy. She couldn’t go anywhere without stopping to have a conversation with about ten people.”

Beautiful things happen when you least expect them.

How strong did your mind have to be—how beautiful your heart—to hold on in such a way? To choose love over fear again

Gratitude is meant to make it bearable. Sometimes gratitude gets you through the day, and sometimes it just gets you from one moment to the next. That’s all.”

I wanted to touch every part of him, to know his body the way I’d come to know his heart.

And that’s what I felt: beautiful, adored, loved.

I loved him so much I thought my heart would burst.

I felt insatiable for her, both satisfied and yet constantly hungry.

We’re a team. If you hurt, I hurt.

the words didn’t seem big enough for what I felt. I worship you? I admire you? I need you? I depend on you? How did you mix all of that up and express it with only three small words?

Don’t lose hope. You never know what tomorrow holds.

I knew he thought I was just as beautiful with makeup on as without—and that he might even prefer me without.

Something tells me I’m going to love you forever.

sometimes that’s all hope is—just a thin sliver of distant light.

How extraordinary life could be: so filled with glorious beauty and heartrending despair. And so often swirled together so that you couldn’t separate the two.

I want to love you with the kind of love you deserve.”