I am the only one who can help me now. But I don’t know how to help myself. It must follow then that I don’t want to help myself. That I want to completely drain myself of all hope, which will leave me safe and dry with nothing to lose.

Here I am trying to live, or rather, I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

Long story short, it was a bad time / Long story short, I survived

I suspect that no matter what happens I will allow it to hurt me. Eat away at my insides, as it were—as it will be. As it always has been.

Here in this bare dormitory that had no door, here on the narrow cot, clothed in a numbered nightgown, she lay with women who were insane and she was one of them.

Please never forget that the sun rises and sets with your smile. At least to me it does. You’re the only thing on this planet worth worshipping.

Scars. A sign that you had been hurt. A sign that you had healed.

I feel sorry for Persephone because even when she’s back with the living, people are afraid of her because of where’s she’s been.

She's delicate. A rare rose. But not without thorns.

The body shuts down when it has too much to bear; goes its own way quietly inside, waiting for a better time, leaving you numb and half alive.

My skin, you see, screams.

Every time people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.

Hell is a place where the walls are made of mirrors and you can never close your eyes.

I'm so tired. It's just like this wave washing over me, again and again. It knocks me down, and when I try to stand up, it just comes for me again. And it's just gonna drown me.

It would be easier now. I was no longer alone. She was with me—beside me. She had said “us”. She had lifted me to her star.

If only there could be an invention that bottled up a memory, like scent. And it never faded, and it never got stale. And then, when one wanted it, the bottle could be uncorked, and it would be like living the moment all over again.

I think that if I could give a name to what I feel it would go away. Find the word that describes the feeling and say it over and over until it’s merely a sound.

I do not want to take part in my life. It can just go on without me; I’m not giving it any help. I don’t want to see it, I don’t want to talk to it, I don’t want it anywhere near me. It takes too much energy. I refuse to be a part of it.

People think that intimacy is about sex. But intimacy is about truth. When you realize you can tell someone your truth, when you can show yourself to them, when you stand in front of them bare and their response is “you're safe with me”- that's intimacy.

I suspect that no matter what happens I will allow it to hurt me. Eat away at my insides, as it were—as it will be. As it always has been.