I justified it in so many ways. I had a very, very long and difficult struggle with my sexuality.

If I was 14 and knew some gay people, I wouldn't nearly have had the struggle I had. Our world is definitely changing.

Being sick allows you to check out of life. Getting well again means you have to check back in. It is absolutely crucial that you feel ready to check back into life because you feel as though something has changed from the time before you were sick. Whatever it was that made you feel insecure, less than, or pressured to live in a way that was uncomfortable to you has to change before you want to go back there and start over.

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 did a lot of fast talking as a youth; I was pretty good at it. I was never talked into it - I was always the one doing the talking.

The diet industry is making a lot of money selling us fad diets, nonfat foods full of chemicals, gym memberships, and pills while we lose a piece of our self-esteem every time we fail another diet or neglect to use the gym membership we could barely afford.

I didn't understand that playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. No one can be any one thing all the time.