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Shoulda, coulda, woulda. It's so easy in the past tense.

Sarah Dessen

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Sarah Dessen
Age: 54
Born: 1970
Born: June 6
Novelist
Writer
Evanston
Illinois
Tense
Easy
Past
Life

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I reached up with my finger and traced the scar over my eyebrow, remembering when that was the greatest hurt I'd ever known.
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I took in a breath. What's the one thing you'd do, I asked. if you could do anything? Pass, he said. For a second I was sure I'd heard wrong. What? He cleared his throat. I said, I pass. Why? He turned his head and looked at me. Because. Because why? Because I just do.
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It takes so little to change everything. If you really thought about it, it would scare you to death.
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The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. IN the end, though maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.
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Whether it was a song, a person, or a story, there was a lot you couldn’t know from just an excerpt, a glance, or part of a chorus.
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In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.
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Because this is what happens when you try to run from the past. It just doesn’t catch up, it overtakes … blotting out the future.
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In a way, I was almost happy to see her. The worst part of me, out in the flesh. Blinking back at me in the dim light, daring me to call her a name other than my own.
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It all depends on how you choose to live it. It's like forever, always changing.
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You didn't have to take a punch for me, you know,' he said. 'I'm a lover, not a fighter.' 'You're a freak is what you are,' I said.
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It's funny how two people can grow up in the same town, go to the same school, have the same friends, and end up so totally different. Family, or lack of it, counts for more than you'd think.
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At the same time, though, I was beginning to wonder if this was just how it was supposed to be for me, like perhaps I wasn't capable of having that many people in my life at any one time. My mom turned up, Nate walked away, one door opening as another clicked shut.
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but you could also look at it the other way. Like you’re saying no matter how bad things are for you, I can still relate.
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In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.
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It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count.
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So finally, I decided that the best response — the safest — was none at all.
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It wasn't about being happy or unhappy. I just didn't want to be me anymore.
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Harder to get in than out, like so little else.
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If you didn't love him, this never would have happened. But you did. And accepting that love and everything that followed it is part of letting it go.
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It was as familiar to me as a song I'd been hearing my whole life, covered by various people but the basic tune the same.
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