I didn't know there was something really wrong, because everyone was crazy. It's just that everyone else was still functional. I didn't realize that I was any worse off.

My radar, after all these years of sanity, is still off when it comes to what people do or don't mean.

When you live with voices in your head, you are drawn inextricably to voices outside your head. Very often the voices work to confirm your worst suspicions. Or think of things you could never have imagined! There are only so many hours of the day to hate yourself.

Every fear, every night terror, every hour I cried for Liev, every fight with Sebastian is registered as a neat white scar.

What people don't understand when you've already been a suicide and pulled through is that after the sadness comes fear: Where is my mind going with this? I don't want to die. I do not want to die. When you don't have so much control over your own thoughts, over the myriad voices in your head, you don't know where they could go.

Thank God the Internet didn't exist when I was 15, 16. I knew people were tearing me apart, but my God, if there had been a net and commenters and I would have been reading them - it was bad enough as it was. To grow up in the media eye, I'm glad it happened, but that was definitely not healthy being around adults all the time.

Cyndi Lauper was hilarious and generous, someone I'd loved from childhood who didn't disappoint.