Like it or not, you'd never be alone.

All quotes from 'Lock And Key' by Sarah Dessen

Sure, it sucked to be lost, but I'd long ago realized I preferred it to depending on anyone else to get me where I needed to go.

My point is, there are a lot of people in the world. No one ever sees everything the same way you do; it just doesn't happen. So when you find one person who gets a couple of things, especially if they're important ones... you might as well hold on to them.

“I’m saying you can’t have it both ways,” I told him. “You can’t act like you care about someone but not let them care about you."

You don’t have to make it so hard, I wanted to say, but there was a time I hadn’t believed this, either. Who was I to tell anyone how to be saved? Only the girl who had tried every way not to be.

What is family? For me, right then, it was one person who’d left me, and two I would have to leave soon. Maybe this was an answer. But it wasn’t the right one. Of that, I was sure.

But that’s just the thing, right? Family isn’t something that’s supposed to be static or set. People marry in, divorce out. They’re born, they die. It’s always evolving, turning into something else.

Back then, I’d thought my mother made up all the songs she sang to me, which was why it was so weird the first time I heard one of them on the radio. It was like discovering that some part of you wasn’t yours at all, and it made me wonder what else I couldn’t claim. But that was later. At the time, there were only the songs, and they were still all ours, no one else’s.

With my mom, when someone was gone, they were gone. She didn’t waste another minute thinking about them, and neither should you.

But now here I was, too far gone to be a stranger, not ready to be friends, the little acquaintance we had made still managing to be, somehow, too much.

What I’d noticed, though, was that more and more lately, when I tried to picture where I did belong, I couldn’t.

As he left the room, I looked down at the picture again, and at the girl in the center, noticing how serene and happy she looked surrounded by all those people. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one thing was for sure: like it or not, you’d never be alone.

Again, with us so close to each other, my first instinct was to pull back, like I had before. But instead, I made myself stay where I was and relax as his hand moved over mine.

I was beginning to wonder if you didn’t always have to choose between turning away for good or rushing in deeper. In the moments that it really counts, maybe it’s enough—more than enough, even—just to be there.

We can’t expect everybody to be there for us, all at once. So it’s a lucky thing that really, all you need is someone.

Searching was useless. There’s just something obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise.

Looking down at the pond, all I could think was that it is an incredible thing, how a whole world can rise from what seems like nothing at all.

“Just wait a second. We can’t leave it like this.” But this, too, wasn’t true. Leaving was easy. It was everything else that was so damned hard.