I make it through the first two weeks of school without a nuclear meltdown.

Used to be that my whole body was my canvas-hot cuts licking my ribs, ladder rungs climbing my arms, thick milkweed stalks shooting up my thighs.

We have to acknowledge that adolescence is that time of transition where we begin to introduce to children that life isn't pretty, that there are difficult things, there are hard situations, it's not fair. Bad things happen to good people.

I wish America would stop judging and criticizing teens and instead, try to understand the battles they have to fight every day.

Censoring books that deal with difficult, adolescent issues does not protect anybody. Quite the opposite. It leaves kids in the darkness and makes them vulnerable. Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance. Our children cannot afford to have the truth of the world withheld from them

I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way.... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself.

She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. "You're lost!" "You're angry!" "You're in the wrong school!" "You're in the wrong country!" "You're on the wrong planet!