And What About You-the Rest Of You-did

I Could Picture Life—school And Everything Else—continuing On Without Me. But I Could Not Picture My Funeral. Not At All. Mostly Because I Couldn’t Imagine Who Would Attend Or What They Would Say.

When You Hold People Up For Ridicule, You Have To Take Responsibility When Other People Act On It.

Everything About It Was False. Right Then, In That Office, With The Realization That No One Knew The Truth About My Life, My Thoughts About The World Were Shaken.

The Young Adult Literature Is Relatively New - It Just Kind Of Exploded In The 2000s. When I Grew Up, There Weren't Bookstores With Sections Dedicated To Teen Lit, Nor Was My Generation Raised Reading Books Written Specifically For Us. Because Of That, Today We Still Think Of Books For Teens As Children's Books And So When You Write A Book That Includes Sensitive Topics, It Just Seems Even More Controversial. What's Troubling To Me About That Is These Are Issues Adults Know That Teens Deal With. Not Writing About Them Makes Them Something We Don't, Or Can't Talk About.

You Told Me I Wrote That Poem Because I Was Afraid Of Dealing With Myself. And I Used My Mom As An Excuse, Accusing Her Of Not Appreciating Or Accepting Me, When I Should Have Been Saying Those Words Into A Mirror.