I just think some women aren't made to be mothers. And some women aren't made to be daughters.

Problems always start long before you really, really see them.

The question I've asked more often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I supposed these questions storm cloud over every marriage: What are you thinking how are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

I had no sympathy for drama queens.

Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids.

I think there is something very relatable in the idea that you hit a certain age, later in your life, where you realize you have to pick up the rug and see what's underneath it and deal with stuff.

It was that summer, too, that I began the cutting, and was almost as devoted to it as my newfound loveliness. I adored tending to myself, wiping a shallow red pool of my blood away with a damp washcloth to magically reveal, just above my naval: queasy. Applying alcohol with dabs of a cottonball, wispy shreds sticking to the bloody lines of: perky. I had a dirty streak my senior year, which I later rectified.