how to be pretentious.

She understood how she was supposed to look and supposed to act. She wore her dark hair long and straight, she dressed in Abercrombie & Fitch; she listened to Dashboard Confessional and Death Cab For Cutie. She liked feeling the eyes of the other girls in the school when she sat in the cafeteria borrowing Courtney’s makeup. She liked the way teachers already knew her name on the first day of class. She liked having guys stare at her when she walked down the hall with Matt’s arm around her. But there was a part of her that wondered if she let them all in on the secret – that some mornings, it was hard to get out of bed and put on someone else’s smile; that she was standing on air, a fake who laughed at all the right jokes and whispered the right gossip and attracted the right guy,  a fake who had nearly forgotten what it felt like to be real..and who, when you got right down to it, didn’t want to remember because it hurt even more than this.

Look, other bands, they want to make it about sex or pain, but you know, The Beatles, they had it all figured out, okay? "I Want to Hold Your Hand." The first single. It's effing brilliant, right?... That's what everybody wants, Nicky. They don't want a twenty-four-hour hump sesh, they don't want to be married to you for a hundred years. They just want to hold your hand.

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.

We accept the love we think we deserve.

I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't.