You’re like Marilyn Monroe,’ Ken tells me, which I take as a compliment and say a nervous “Thank You”. Interrupting, he adds, ‘You’re all velvet and Velcro. Men want you because you’re sexy and broken and when it gets too rough they can say “Hey! This toy is broken!” and toss you aside without feeling bad.

I think a neurotic learns from their mistakes. A psychotic does not.

There is that doll dress-up quality of adorable teenage girl writer, and I never felt either as adorable as I was supposed to be, or as dark as the rumors, you know, "She must have slept with the editor," and I was like, "Oh my god, I'm still a virgin." It was very strange.

I think it's sort of the hypothetical point where communism and fascism meet. They love tragedy, and they love surface beauty. You just watch it play out over and over in the media. It was the English edition of Glamour who were looking for stories of Iraqi war widows, but specified that they had to be attractive.

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

Is it needy? It's not. We don't need each other. We just really, really enjoy each other. And we're good together. We're good people together. And I have the funniest feeling. I can really, truly touch this all, this happiness and the sadness too, I can trace all of it with my fingers. It isn't theoretical or distant. This feels like me. This is me. I love him, and, for the first time in a relationship, I also like me. Every time he says "I love you," I answer, "I believe you.

I'm in love with someone good and kind and gentle, and he's seen the darkness too, but somehow we've become each other's light.