“My embarrassment was complete. If I just had passed out, that would have been bad enough. But to make matters worse, Will had carried me outside, where everyone else was; everyone in my youth group had seen Will carrying me. I felt like melting into the bench on which I sat.”

“But now my problems had been set loose. They could be anywhere at any time and I was just like everyone else I knew: almost positive that there was something profoundly and undiagnosably wrong with me.”

“I had one rule: respect. For me, my family, and for my friends … It might sound hypocritical to the women that have passed through my apartment door, but if they carried themselves with respect, I would have given it to them.”

“It kind of felt like it was my first time. It had been a life altering experience, and I knew that if for whatever reason this didn't work out with him, he would always be the one I compared everyone else to. He would always be the one that totally rocked my world.”

“I'd sit in a circle and a bunch of people who'd been through as much shit as I had would look at me like I snuck into the club without paying the cover. And I'd feel like screaming and telling them that I had paid it the same as everyone else in the room, I just didn't feel like waving around my receipt.”

“I am not an outsider. I am an insider who discovered that everyone else had gone out.”