When you durst do it, then you were a man;
And, to be more than what you were, you would
Be so much more the man. Nor time nor place
Did then adhere, and yet you would make both:
They have made themselves, and that their fitness now
Does unmake you. I have given suck, and know
How tender ‘tis to love the babe that milks me:
I would, while it was smiling in my face,
Have pluck’d my nipple from his boneless gums,
And dash’d the brains out, had I so sworn as you
Have done to this.

Of course, you never really forget anyone, but you certainly release them. You stop allowing their history to have any meaning for you today. You let them change their haircut, let them move, let them fall in love again. And when you see this person you have let go, you realize that there is no reason to be sad. The person you knew exists somewhere, but you are separated by too much time to reach them again.

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Recovery feels like shit. It didn’t feel like I was doing something good; it felt like I was giving up. It feels like having to learn how to walk all over again.

It’s strange how life works: You want something and you wait and wait and feel like it’s taking forever to come. Then it happens and it’s over and all you want to do is curl back up in that moment before things changed.

Everything is more beautiful because we are doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

I feel most people’s sexuality is enormously complicated. That’s what it means to be human. Wouldn’t it be great if we honored that complexity rather than turn it into gossip or ridicule? Wouldn’t it be great if we accepted sexual diversity, in ourselves and others, without condemning it?

As a former self-harmer myself, I really do relate to anyone who is suffering so acutely from feelings of worthlessness that they attack themselves. That’s born of a feeling of not being heard. It’s such a gentle person usually who turns in on themselves, like they’d rather hurt themselves than hurt somebody else. I feel a lot of empathy toward people who suffer like that, or what I like to call “hypersensitivity.” It’s a form of intelligence in a funny way; you’re reading things that most people are blind or deaf to. When someone says to you that you’re being too sensitive, spin that around and think in your head, “Well, you’re just not being sensitive enough.

But since the rash of teen suicides, I’ve seen a lot of celebs come out—who you can just tell have never had a day’s fucking trauma in their life—and say they were once bullied or some other lame-ass story. You know what? Bullying is about consistent, violent or verbal abuse. A daily basis, a weekly basis. It’s not the same as once having something “horrible” happen to you. It’s a big difference.

Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history’s in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand.

No one gets a free pass in life, and we all face different challenges at different points in our journey. We’re not defined by who we are at one particular place in time, but by who we become as a result of our experiences and our willingness to grow as human beings. My being unpopular in high school drove me to do better things and to be a more empathetic person—that ultimately is a real gift.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

The way sadness works is one of the strangest riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain, but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire. You might find it difficult to see anything but your own sadness, the way smoke can cover a landscape so that all anyone can see is black. You may find that happy things are tainted with sadness, the way smoke leaves its ashen colors and scents on everything it touches. And you may find that if someone pours water all over you, you are damp and distracted, but not cured of your sadness, the way a fire department can douse a fire but never recover what has been burnt down.