I grew up in a family that despised displays of strong emotion, rage in particular. We stewed. We sulked. When arguments did occur, they were full-scale conniptions, and we regarded them as family failings. Afterward, we withdrew from one another and tried our best to strike the event from our memories.

I don't know where the idea originated that memoir writing is cathartic. For me, it's always felt like playing my own neurosurgeon, sans anesthesia.

So apparently all homeschooled kids spoke like pretentious liberal arts college students.

Sometimes the very loved ones who seem to be causing all our problems are just calling attention to deeper issues the rest of the family would rather ignore.

My demeanor isn’t that of a woman enraged. To see me slumped, glassy-eyed, holding a sandwich someone has cut for me into four “manageable” pieces, a person might tell you I look much more like a woman subdued.

Religion seemed as good an escape route as any, plus it was conveniently compatible with psychedelics.

Crushes weren’t a precursor to love, they were a precursor to having your heart chewed up like Shark Week.

And narcissists don’t love themselves. They hardly have any selves to begin with. They put all their energy into the fake image that they wear like a mask. Only there’s nothing but dead space behind it.

Instead of seeing bad in yourself, you perceive it in others. It’s a defense mechanism. One that allows people to go on believing they’re perfect.

Why is it so hard to say good-bye to something even when you know it’s a slow-growing cancer?