Bound copies for everyone!

Dirt on the ex is likely to show up whenever it feels like it. Such as when your mom runs into the ex's best friend's mom at the grocery store and they chat in the meat department for what must have been half an hour. Strangely, in the last several months I've inadvertently caught up on what a lot of people I used to know are doing. It seems like they are all doing well, and, looking back, if you'd have told my 17-year-old self all the eventual answers, I would not have been surprised. Is this comforting?

I'm in possibly the most serious period of transition I've ever faced -- for the first time in 19 years, I will not be starting school again in the fall, and while this offers a great sense of freedom, the idea of getting a 40-hour/week job seems like a prison sentence to me now. And that's pretty much what I have to do. High school was miserable, but at least there was a community of people there who could be counted on to offer company in suffering, which made it not really suffering. The struggles we had then were not so obvious, because it seemed like once we left, they'd be irrelevant. That comfortable world is gone, but the struggles and questions have just morphed.