Be a little kinder than you have to

“I knew what depression was. I’ve known what it was since I was at least sixteen. That was the first year in which I unequivocally wished for death: not in a melodramatic emo-kid way, but in a lumpen, constant-state-of-passive- suicidal-ideation way. I did not act out. I didn’t drink, do drugs, sleep around, or even date. I abhorred physical contact and wondered if I might be asexual; that’s how disinterested and disgusted I felt at the thought of anyone embracing me, kissing me, taking my clothes off. I was an underweight overachiever with no school spirit. “You’re so laid-back,” my friends would say. I wasn’t; I just had zero affect.”

“Our lives are not our own. We are bound to others, past and present, and by each crime and every kindness, we birth our future.”