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A couple sits out thebelow us, holding hands on the bench and I want to be theet tripped sodown, you know? Like, maybe you deserve to stay down, maybe it’s meant to be Maybe it’s just easier to stay down, and you don’t have the energy to haul your ass off the ground again at all"

"It sounds terrible," Jeh "It’s everything you don’t want to happen to you You think you’re strong and that you’ll always love living and want to live, but soet so tired…"

"You’re tired a lot, then"

I shrug "Sometimes But I’ tired just isn’t so I do"

"We all do it once in a while, Isis," Jemma assures me "No one is an exception"

"But I’m special!" I whine "You don’t understand! Crazy shit is my forte and I do stuff, the best stuff, and I never stopand even then sometimes not, sidenote: the janitor hates h-snort behind her hand, eyes twinkling, and suddenly I start laughing too But it’s a different laugh fro lately – it’s loud and happy, and it only gets louder and happier, and it’s light, the lightest thing I’ve done in a long tih e both calm down "And I broke rule numero uno"

Jeh at your own joke, because that ood one and also you look like an easily arossness"

"I see what you mean now," She says "Someone like you, so vibrant and funny, is rarely tired It e for you when you are"

"It’s like…like losing a leg but trying to run a race anyway," I say Je to sound very sensitive, and please don’t take this to , because I’m not qualified to do that, but does anyone in your family have a history of depression?"

I ruht up "I swear to you I definitely don’t because I’ve worked really hard to not have it and I’m happy all the time so I don’t have it Ever And I never will"

Jemma nods, and writes on the clipboard, butI burn to fill theether and clutch theht

"I had it Maybe I think When I was fourteen"

"What made you think that?"

"I didn’t like myself I still don’t a little But I really didn’t likebut it’s not, but when you’re in love and a guy tells you you’re ugly and fat you start to believe it, you know? Also it wasn’t love Maybe it was But probably not, because it ood"

"Soood and horrible at the sa," I jut my chin out "That’s just…that’s just the old-man-poetry-romanticism of it People like to sound deep so they say pain is a part of love but it’s not Love is –"

"There is nothing about it that is ugly," Jack says "May I?"

I hesitate, and nod He reaches around and brings arette burns on ently, so gently