think there’s so much out of our control. Almost everything about how our lives go. But I think deciding that we’re all just on a track, that we never really had any say over our own decisions—it feels like the kind of thing someone with a lot of regrets would need to be true. Maybe I need something different to be true.”

That I could miss it, if you’re actually not.

It freaks me out a little, that I could…that I could feel like this, about someone who’s good at pretending to be fine.

That’s why what he said bothered me so much. Because if he’s saying it, I can’t shake the idea that there might be some truth to it.

Hayden on my mind, I think.

I’m falling in love with him.

The dopamine hit of proof, evidence, facts that add up to the knowledge that maybe the person whose very presence excites you is also excited by your presence. That I think he likes me back feeling.

But bringing something intangible into the world that can live on without you. Something bigger than the person who made it. And even then, the goal is secondary to the process. The process is for us. It changes us in ways that can’t be measured.

Maybe truth can’t be whittled out of a pile of research but instead has to be built from all of it, no spare pieces left behind, absolutely nothing discarded.