“There was so much distance between what I felt and what I was supposed to feel. It made me sad. I was alone. Meaning unshared is barely meaning at all. My reasons for finishing, whatever finishing meant, were defined wholly extrinsically. I had believed in what society told me would happen: that I would push through a challenge and emerge, new and strong, on the other side, where love was. But I was left instead with the deep, profound emptiness that comes with knowing entirely for certain that what you were told by society was wrong.”

—Devin Kelly