Jesus, I wondered, what do you do with pain so bad it has no redeeming value? It cannot even be alchemized into art, into words, into something you can chalk up to an interesting experience because the pain itself, its intensity, is so great that it has woven itself into your system so deeply that there is no way to objectify or push it outside or find its beauty within. That is the pain I’m feeling now. Its so bad, its useless. The only lesson I will ever derive from this pain is how bad pain can be.

But day after day of depression, the kind that doesn’t seem to merit carting me off to a hospital but allows me to sit here on this stoop in summer camp as if I were normal, day after day wearing down everybody who gets near me. My behavior seems, somehow, not acute enough for them to know what to do with me, though I’m just enough of a mess to be driving everyone around me crazy.

Feminism is a good venue for getting yourself across as much as for getting your point across.

Banned! My eyes light up, I think I see stars. Anything that has been banned by anyone must be something I’d like.

Very early in my life it was already too late.

In the meantime, I could withdraw to my room, could hide and sleep as if I were dead

Oh, Ma, you're looking at all the trees, and I'm not even in the forest.