That was when I cut my arms with a razor blade as a means of creative expression. I only did it lightly, just grazing the skin, to see the way the blood would bleed out, to make myself look tougher. Not like some of those kids who keep going deeper and deeper, wondering what they look like down to the bone, because it's a world that's so close and yet so far and so dangerous and so much their own. The only world that is their own.

It was always a relief when she came home to him. Like water or food. Like music or that moment when you cut yourself with a knife and squeeze the skin and no blood oozes out.

She began to feel like the plastic doll she had been named after, without even a hole where her mouth was supposed to be.

When you live in a city with no stars to wish on, you have to wish on each other.

You have to make your own family, your own life.

If you want to find the trail, if you want to find yourself, you must explore your dreams alone. You must grow at a slow pace in a dark cocoon of loneliness so you can fly like wind, like wings, when you awaken.

I think depression creates in me an urgent need to write, but I also believe that daily stress, and even the positive stress of intense happiness, can compel me to express myself through the written word.