“When I walked into the room, I looked down to the floor and saw that each and every garment I owned had been pulled from its rightful place and had been meticulously sliced into countless pieces. One thing was painfully obvious to me: these clothes were symbolic of me; they represented my body.What you really wanted was to slice me into countless pieces.”

“Whatever it is that you know, or that you don’t know, tell me about it. We can exchange tirades. The comma is my favorite piece of punctuation and I’ve got all night.”

“He mentioned the connection between us. He identified with me. These are the things that many people want to hear, that most “normal” people want to be able to truthfully say, but almost no one can.”

“I thought about how I had now let a self-proclaimed lunatic into my house twice and considered the possibility that my life needed sorting out.”

“There are no mirrors of any kind in here. If there were, I’d want to smash them, but I wouldn’t. Instead, I’d probably just stare at them, giving myself negative affirmations.”

“Maybe I should find another doctor; one who realizes the importance of scars.”

“The counselor says that with more time and more surgeries, I will begin to feel normal again. She says this with a mouth that can still smile. It’s so easy to be reassuring when you have lips.”