There are so many ways to be brave in this world. Sometimes it involves giving up everything you have ever known, or everyone you have ever loved for the sake of something greater.

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Killing you is not the worst thing they can do to you," I say. "Controlling you is.

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Since I was young, I have always known this: Life damages us, every one. We can’t escape that damage. But now, I am also learning this: We can be mended. We mend each other.

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I know that change is difficult, and comes slowly, and that it is the work of many days strung together in a long line until the origin of them is forgotten.

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Maybe there's more we all could have done, but we just have to let the guilt remind us to do better next time.

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My mother told me once that we can't survive alone, but even if we could, we wouldn't want to. Without a faction we have no purpose and no reason to live.

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It's strange how a word, a phrase, a sentence, can feel like a blow to the head.

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Some people will always fear change. But we can't indulge them.

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Desperation can make a person do surprising things.

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Every faction conditions its members to think and act a certain way. And most people do it. For most people, it's not hard to learn, to find a pattern of thought that works and stay that way. But our minds move in a dozen different directions. We can't be confined to one way of thinking, and that terrifies our leaders. It means we can't be controlled. And it means that no matter what they do, we will always cause trouble for them.

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