#teens

"Everything that happens to you matters to me."

"Does our purpose on Earth directly link to the people whom we end up meeting? Are our relationships and experiences actually the required dots that connect and then lead us to our ultimate destinies?"

"Something, somewhere, knows what’s best for me and promises to keep sending me people and experiences to light my way as long as I live in gratitude and keep paying attention to the signs."

"I’m going to follow this invisible red thread until I find myself again… until I finally figure out… who I’m meant to be."

"This is your life – not your parents’, teachers’ or significant other’s. If you ever find yourself on a path that just doesn’t feel safe anymore, you have every right to stop the car, get out – change your shoes and start walking."

"I know that this process of ‘me changing my life’ doesn’t just end once I set fire to this list of things I hate about myself. Tonight isn’t as much of a new beginning as it is a violent end and I know the real work hasn’t even started yet."

"Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or feels unsafe, I really want you to listen and trust in that voice."

"Let this time in your life cut you open and drain all of the things that are holding you back. I’m going to help you forgive the things that you won’t let yourself forget."

"If you surround yourself with the good and righteous, they can only raise you up. If you surround yourself with the others, they will drag you down into the doldrums of mediocrity, and they will keep you there, but only as long as you permit it."

"I’ve grown up defined by this desperate, undeniable, ‘can’t breathe’ kind of space inside of myself and I’m afraid that the diagnosis is fatal."

"Everything hurts right now and nothing is helping because as the pain is getting worse — so is the love."

"I really believe that there is an invisible red thread tied between him and me, and that it has stretched and tangled for years — across oceans and lifetimes. I know that it won’t break because our souls are tied."

"I love him in ways that I can’t explain to other people. They don’t understand… it’s not their fault."

"I never want you to deny anything about yourself because you have grown up thinking it’s unacceptable or inconvenient for the people around you."

"Robert, I’m sorry that you feel so strange, but I’m not sorry that you’re feeling it because of me,” I whispered, my heart feeling a familiar twinge as I continued, “but even if you hadn’t felt it, it would not change the way I feel about you."

"I met a boy whose eyes showed me that the past, present and future were all the same thing."

"I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever in love with you."

"I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…"

"I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…"

"Books didn’t make me wallow in darkness, darkness made me wallow in books."