Numbness keeps us from becoming.

I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, For the same reason I laugh so often—because I’m paying attention.

We find out early that telling the whole truth makes people uncomfortable and is certainly not ladylike or likely to make us popular, so we learn to lie sweetly so that we can be loved. And when we figure out this system, we are split in two: the public self, who says the right things in order to belong, and the secret self, who thinks other things.

There is beauty to be found in the pain. Life is brutal, but it's also beautiful. Life is Brutiful.

Friend, I am sober today. Thank God Almighty, I’m sober today. I’m here, friend. Yesterday my son turned ten, which means that I haven’t had a drink for ten years and eight months. Lots of beautiful and horrible things have happened to me during the past ten years and eight months, and I have handled my business day in and day out without booze. GOD, I ROCK.