“Sometimes, no matter how much faith we have, we lose people. But you never forget them. And sometimes, it's those memories that give us the faith to go on.”

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CRUMPLED MEMORIES
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I just found a crumpled up piece of paper on the bottom of one of the many stacks on my cluttered desk.

It was something I wrote four years and one week ago.

I went to my room, sat down at my desk, pulled out a sheet of paper, and wrote this:

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"I love the way she smiles.

I love the way she sings along with the Dawson's Creek song.

I love that she sleeps with her arms folded under her pillow.

I love how much she cares about her old friends, and the stories she sometimes tells about them.

I love that she thinks the dancing baby is cute, and that her eyesight is less than perfect.

I love the noises she makes with her stomach, and the way she gets along with her sister, and how alike they are.

I love it when she calls anyone cute, how she's always willing to play.

I love that she appreciates a good cheeseburger.

I love that she's a big ER fan.

I love the pictures on her walls.

I love the way she worries that she's hitting snooze one more time than she used to.

I love her laugh, and her handwriting, especially those little smiley-faces she draws.

I love the way she rubs my hair and giggles at its fuzziness when I haven’t brushed it.

I love it when her eyes get huge, or when she raises her eyebrow and looks off to the side and thinks that I’m crazy."

It's torn off there.

After writing this, I crumpled it up and threw it across the room, sinking it straight into the trash can.

The next day I fished it out and opened it up, and sometime between then and now I tore off the bottom.

At the bottom you can kind of make out that the next line was "I love the way she loves her friends."

The line after that is entirely gone, but I still remember that it said:

"It's the way she loves me that I just can't stand."