Women in the postfeminist era, while supposedly strong and commanding and equal to men in every sense, looked weaker and smaller than ever before.

Even when I took first prize, topped the class, won the race, I never really won anything. I was merely avoiding the embarrassment of losing.

My feelings for Ellen overrode all of my fear about being out as a lesbian. I had to be with her, and I just figured I'd deal with the other stuff later.

I finally understood that by being on a perpetual diet, I had practiced a "disordered" form of eating my whole life. I restricted when I was hungry and in need of nutrition and binged when I was so grotesquely full I couldn't be comfortable in any position by lying down. Diets that tell people what to eat or when to eat are the practices inbetween. And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating.

I was trying to find a reason for having had to escape from the place that was my home. To convince myself of my choices, I had to make it a place that everyone should want to escape from.

Normal" isn't an adjective you wish to hear after putting that much effort into making sure it was spectacular.

I wondered if that's what aging felt like. That desire and reality were dueling until the day you die, that nobody every got to a place of peace. I had always wanted to get old so I didn't have to care anymore, but I began to think that it would be best just to skip the getting older part and just die.