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When you lose a cousin, you reevaluate your own life, your own mortality, because their age wasn’t that far off from yours.

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It wasn’t until college that I finally talked about it and looking back I don’t know why I kept it a secret. Looking back I wish I hadn’t kept it a secret.

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“Better not tell your momma,” she yelled. I could do nothing but shake my head.

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How I learned it’s not just a cheesy lyric from a Barbra Streisand song, after all.

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2. An Invitation to North Korea

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I knew I loved him pretty young. We would always be the two kids at the event who would go off and play by themselves, and when we hit our pre-teen/teenage years, the bond that we had formed playing in the backyard at a family gathering turned into something much more profound.

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Gone at 21. Can anyone understand how terrible that is? You waited your whole life to have your freedom. You knew that you wanted to be left to make your own choices when your time came. Then to have that taken from you.