Emery Lord

“I'm looking for some kind of permanence, so my mark will linger on the world once I'm gone, in the places where I found joy..”

“Darkness might keep flooding in, but I finally had just enough light to find the way back to myself.”

“Whose empire did you just overthrow?" My own.”

“Well, you change as you get older, especially at this time in your life. You become more yourself, hopefully. And sometimes that changes the dynamic, even with people you love. So it's not that you were wrong. You were right for that time. But you grow up and you grow out of relationships. Even the ones you thought, at one point, might be forever.”

“My dark days made me strong. Or maybe I already was strong, and they made me prove it.”

“I'm looking for somekind of permanence, so my mark will linger on the world once I'm gone, in the places where I found joy.." -Page 81”

“And I want to be one of them. I want to be one of them so, so badly - to fit into this balance, their history, the wolf pack way of them. I see it now, why my mom wants that for me. I see how you can't help but want it, if you get close enough to witness a group of friends knitted together like this.”

“You can ache for where you come from, and it's homesickness. A relationship, and it's heartbreak. But is there a word for missing your friends like that?”

“I know this feeling of being a ghost in your own life - no one sees you, no one feels you, so you stay still as if you could actually disappear at any moment.”

“And that's why I don't get to cry, I guess. Because they do. Because we're older but we're not the grown-ups who seem too far away to understand. I tuck that thought inside me, warm and small like balled hands inside hoodie pockets. Beneath the beech trees and sugar maples, feet crunching against dead leaves, I hope for strength. Because as much as I want to be the one crying, I want to be the kind of person someone can hold onto.”

“After all, once there was a girl named Lucy who loved her family, old and new.It's not the type of love that ends.”

“To the deepest, most cellular level of my being, I resent people who believe that depression is the same as weakness, that "sad" people must be coddled like helpless toddlers.”