And human instinct is ancient and reliable, utterly mysterious and possibly capable of great genius. I believe that refined, fluent instincts are a person’s most valuable asset. My own instincts have repeatedly guided me against...

When you say, “I need more confidence,” what you’re really saying is, “I need those people over there to approve of me.”That is the desire to control other people and what they think. The first...

Glen had a disability more disfiguring than a burn and more terrifying than cancer. Glen had been born on the day after Christmas. “My parents just combine my birthday with Christmas, that’s all,” he explained.But...

I confidently walked up to the counter, and his friends moved to the side to let me through. I handed him the note. “Happy Birthday,” I said. Then I smiled and walked out of the...

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

I love you,” she said, and I knew she meant it because she spoke the words from the heart at the center of her chest. This, at least, had not been left behind at the...

I discovered the bleeding when he licked my hand and left a swath of blood behind, death’s autograph.

This is what you should know about losing someone you love. They do not travel alone. You go with them.

It’s not such a huge deal when this happens at a 7-Eleven. It’s pretty huge, though, when you spend the entire job interview trying not to come across like a box of hair and you...

I want to write something that means something to someone…the reminds them of what a second, a moment, really is…or that assures them that we are just as lost as they are. I want to...

I could not imagine the kind of person that would, upon seeing a crazy talcum-powder-covered Southern lady think to herself, Hmmmm, she might make a great new friend. The line between normal and crazy seemed...

I slipped on a turtleneck, laughing when my head became stuck in the turtle part. If they weren’t called turtlenecks, I wouldn’t have worn them.

The more time I spent at the Finches’, the more I realized what a waste of my life this school crap was. It was nothing but a holding tank for kids without bigger plans or...

It is always safe to see yourself truthfully. You never have to be ashamed of yourself, with yourself.

And in my mind, this settles the issue. I would never drink cologne, and am therefore not an alcoholic.

Even painfully shy and awkward people are not painfully shy or awkward when they are alone. The way to access this natural, comfortable alone-self when you are with others is by choosing to forbid yourself...

Although I was able to maintain a pleasant expression, I was mentally throwing up in her face.

Not crazy in a ‘let’s paint the kitchen bright red!’ sort of way. But crazy in a ‘gas oven, toothpaste sandwich, I am God’ sort of way. Gone were the days when she would stand...

I nodded again, but I knew I would not grow up to drive a bulldozer. It would be awful to be dirty all day like these men. I didn’t say it, but at best I...

I liked his attention. But I also felt like there was something sick and wrong about it. Like it might make me sick later. I thought of my grandmother, my father’s mother. How when I...

Saying just the right thing after a considerable, awkward pause is far less effective than saying the wrong thing with perfect timing. I’m telling you.

I am prone to envy. It is one of my three default emotions, the others being greed and rage. I have also experienced compassion and generosity, but only fleetingly and usually while drunk, so I...

I want to feel calm and at ease. Like someone who lives in Half Moon Bay, California, and makes hummus from scratch. Instead, I feel like I’m a contestant on some awful supermarket game show...

If you believe suicide will bring you peace, or at the very least just an end to everything you hate- you are displaying self-caring behavior. You are still able to actively seek solutions to your...

I sit there and think how it isn’t fair that I can’t drink at all, even a little. I realize I have crammed an entire lifetime of moderate drinking into a decade of hard-core drinking...

Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.

Doctor, if being a bitch is healthy, then I am the healthiest damn woman on the face of the earth

Fact: upon locking yourself our of your apartment you will immediately need to use the bathroom. Fact: and then you will stand in place and watch your door. You will just stare. As though rebuffed...

As a young child I had Santa and Jesus all mixed up. I could identify Coke or Pepsi with just one sip, but I could not tell you for sure why they strapped Santa to...

Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.

I didn’t begin life hating my grandmother. Like every child, I adored her. Until I formed a brain and got to know her.

Just as I had long suspected, a person didn’t really need math for anything anyway. Maybe some people did. Some limited people.

His eyes are so clear and blue that nothing but clichés enter my mind.

I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how lonely, and how deep this feeling runs. And it scares the shit out...

My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when...

He continues to smile expectantly. I take a step back. I don’t want to catch whatever he has. He is a disturbing out-of-uniform Santa.

This is what happens when you go against the grain of truth: you get splinters later on.

His laugh is made of porch swings and lemonade.

And I hope she does not live in a dark world. Because even the most terrible loss doesn’t have to make you darker; it can make you deeper.

Why am I so anxious? And then it hits me. I’m not anxious, I’m lonely. And I’m lonely in some horribly deep way and for a flash of an instant, I can see just how...

I used to feel so alone in the city. All those gazillions of people and then me, on the outside. Because how do you meet a new person? I was very stunned by this for...

It may seem to you that your life is over now. Your future without the person you love is no future at all.Death is a head-on collision with your plans.But everything in life–the gold fillings...

If you have one parent who loves you, even if they can’t buy you clothes, they’re so poor and they make all kinds of mistakes and maybe sometimes they even give you awful advice, but...

My question was:How did I go from merely seeing the dirty French Santa in a bar to being in his hotel room the next morning? And this presented me with an actual equation. How did...

Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.

It’s a wonder I’m even alive. Sometimes I think that. I think that I can’t believe I haven’t killed myself. But there’s something in me that just keeps going on. I think it has something...

Thanksgiving was nothing more than a pilgrim-created obstacle in the way of Christmas; a dead bird in the street that forced a brief detour.

Turn off the light,” she says as she walks away, creating a small woosh that smells sweet and chemical. It makes me sad because it’s the smell she makes when she’s leaving.