By the way, Katie, I feel I should tell you, Beau and I are doing a few things at once here. One is, we're trying to draw attention to this thread by posting a LOT, in a short amount of time. Why draw attention to it? Well, because it's fantasticabulous, that's why.
The other thing we're doing, slightly, is something called "muffining." (I told you, we've got a thing for muffins...) See, to "muffin" a thread is to take it off topic. And while we're mostly sticking to the topic of your awesome story and awesome writing, we're also rambling about how guilty we feel about our writing, and thus we're sort of semi-muffining.
Another thing, you notice, above, Beau apologized for a double-post, thinking he was posting twice in a row. However, I posted JUST before him, so he did not know my post was there when he posted. Thus, I "ziffled" him. Ziffeling was named for the member, Ziffel, who pulled a lot of ziffels.
I tell you these things, because you will run into these terms quite frequently on this forum, and you will want to understand them. Also, because it may be strange to be welcomed to a forum by having your first thread be muffined. Speaking of muffins, have a muffin. Do you want blue-berry? Chocolate-chip? Some other kind?...
And speaking of muffining, Beau, I believe the line you're looking for between "You just don't know what it's like" and "When your reason to be," is: "When the bottom drops out of your life."