What people don’t understand when you’ve already been a suicide and pulled through is that after the sadness comes fear: Where is my mind going with this? I don’t want to die. I do not...

There’s a boy whose affection I am determined to hunt down and kill. It used to be material objects I felt I needed to be happy. It would make me feel stable if I had...

It’s as if he can no longer acknowledge the love he felt or the pain I am in. I have been dismissed. I don’t think I was smarter or as beautiful as the other girls...

You could be together forever, but one of you is going to have to go first. I want it to last. I love him and I want it to stay.

The sadness ― the general sadness that squats and pees inside my brain ― isn’t over. It never will be. I know how best to chase it away, though. It usually works. Sometimes it doesn’t. But I...

Time heals all wounds. And if it doesn’t, you name them something other than wounds and agree to let them stay.

I say, “Well then I don’t know if it was real, and that makes me feel like I’m going insane again.””Absolutely it was real. It was a real, partial picture. Because it ended preemptively, things...

He meant everything he said, when he said it. But this is his default. And it won out. Right now you’re depressed about one thing. Before you were depressed about everything. These are good times...

No one ever loved you like him. And no one ever took it away so completely. But it’s here. Look around.

People don’t know. We don’t know ourselves so we tell ourselves what we really know is other people. We could say the depth of pain we feel for the lovers who’ve left us is because...

When you live with voices in your head, you are drawn inextricably to voices outside your head. Very often the voices work to confirm your worst suspicions. Or think of things you could never have...

There is a blessing in losing the one we love. It’s the blessing of self-transformation. You don’t have to who you were anymore. You’ve struggled. And now you can change. It doesn’t mean that bits...

It’s only a heartache. It isn’t a tragedy. A tragedy would be losing the father of my children to cancer. This I wrestle with the hardest. There are thirty-one flavors of pain, like Baskin Robbins...

I’m in love with someone good and kind and gentle, and he’s seen the darkness too, but somehow we’ve become each other’s light.

Of course he freaked me out. Of course it’s nothing to do with me. But none of that matters. He loved me and now he doesn’t. I was everything to him and now I am...

Now that he’s gone, I feel like I’m a senior citizen who gave away her life savings over the phone. And this is the crux: I never in my life believed in someone as much...

I never lie ― I am a blatantly truthful person about almost everything. My addiction (or disease as some call it) always lies. I have had very good relationships, but the addict in me always fucked...

You want to know, but are afraid to ask, whether or not I found someone. If there could be anyone to fill that hole in my heart after I lost him. I did. “Life is...

It’s like he has emotional amnesia… I think you have to accept that the person you knew isn’t there at the moment. I was witness to how much he loved you. I have the photos....

I’m not crazy or dangerous,just a bit eccentric and lonely.

I finally accept that not only do I not understand the death of my relationship, but I do not need to. These men were good and kind to me, they loved me and I loved...

Bad people very often do one good thing.

It is madness. And if you don’t know who you are, or if your real self has drifted away from you with the undertow, madness at least gives you an identity. It’s the same with...

In other words, it was a struggle with himself. And the product of that struggle: anger, bitterness, resentment, envy or transformation, aspiration, hope, decency..the product of that struggle is the quality of your life and...

When he asked if he was mine, tears in his eyes, I think he knew what he would do, what he would have to do, and he was mourning us. He was mourning us the...

In hindsight, I have no idea why he was ever with me. He thought highly of my breasts. And . . . that’s it, I think.

The goal was to get sane, to get whole, to be complete enough to support someone else.

Men and the pursuit of them are strongly intertwined with my mental health. I would say, in my defensive defense, that the problem with being a serial monogamist is, there isn’t anybody random or unimportant:...

You may right now be nursing a broken heart. Friends will say, “Aren’t you glad you had the experience anyway?” And you may say “No.” Eventually, unbelievably, you may not remember the boy that triggered...

If killing yourself is not an option anymore, you have to sink into the darkness instead, and make something out of it.

I think I’ve lost my faith and I can’t stop writingbecause I don’t know howmuch longer I can hold on.

And then, with the feather-green darkness pressed against the windows, he puts his filthy fingers on my scrubbed hope face and says, “If I kiss you, it’s all over.” And then he does. And then...

Let me tell you something: when you dance, you are the greatest dancer who has ever lived. And when you sing, you will have the courage to raise your voice to the heavens, knowing that...

When he kisses me, I cry. I explain it’s not because I wish he were someone else, it’s because it’s such a shock to the system to be desired after feeling so completely abandoned.

You do it how you can do it, so long as it’s getting done, you’re okay.

But I saw the pain and sadness in everything, and swirled it round my mouth like a fine wine.

Accepting the presidency, Barack introduces “my best friend of sixteen years, the love of my life, Michelle Obama” and I think I will pass out. That, right there, is love in action.