We all wear a mask. The trick is keeping it in place.

Life doesn’t wait. You have to make it happen. You have to live it while it’s happening around you. Life moves on.

But, of course, everyone has regrets. Loose ends. Things they could do if they had more time.

Love isn’t simple, Katie, and neither is life. Things that are worth having are sometimes complicated, and they evoke complicated emotions. You know, one of the reasons people often turn to alcohol or drugs is that they can’t deal with complications.

My brain was playing tricks on me, sucking me inward, away from my life, my family, myself.

Depression’s a funny thing. We don’t know what to do about it – as a society – unless we’ve been there ourselves. The person before us is not someone we know, and their unhappiness is often not something we can understand. So we downplay it, and we make the afflicted somehow to blame. No one would ever tell someone with cancer that if they tried a bit harder, if they got out of bed and took a shower, everything would be better, but people told her all those things. That and more, worse.

There are so many versions of the truth, I’ve found. One for each person. But the whole truth? No one ever tells the whole truth. Do they?

One person can’t fulfill every role in someone’s life.

No one had told her, before she had children, that being a mother would be like reliving her own childhood, only worse. That she’d have to re-feel all the slights and worries a hundredfold.

Life is made up of turning points. Forks in the road. We make choices every day that take us down one path over another. The thing I’ve learned is, there generally aren’t any signposts along the way.