I am sick of the girl who cries 'wolf' all the time. Even though not one of those cries was ever a false alarm

I come from a family of screamers. If they are trying to express any emotion or idea beyond pass the salt, it comes in shrieks.

I can see that I imagine all kinds of rejection that never happens. I can see that I beg and plead for love that is freely offered because I somehow believe that if I don't ask for it, everyone will forget about me: I will be a little kid sent off to sleep-away camp whose parents forget to meet her at the bus when she comes back in August. Or else I think people are nice to me only to be nice to me, that they feel sorry for me because I am such a loser- as if anyone could possibly be that generous.

But just as a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, a little bit of energy, in the hands of someone hell-bent on suicide, is a very dangerous thing.

I am fortunate to have been well paid for an almost pathological honesty.

If you take someone's thoughts and feelings away, bit by bit, consistantly, they then have nothing left except some gritty, gnawing, shitty little instinct, down there, somewhere, worming around in the gut, but so far down, so hidden, it's impossible to find.

Embrace fanaticism. Harness joie de vivre by pursuing insane interests, consuming passions, and constant sources of gratification that do not depend on the approval of others