Meg Howrey

There are things you do when you are a teenager, or a dancer, or just a girl, I guess. You cut your food up in special ways, or you cut yourself, or paper dolls. You pretend that there is an invisible audience watching you all the time, and you do things to impress them or pretend that they didn't see what you just did because their live video feed was interrupted somehow. You steal things or tell lies or speak to strangers in a Russian accent. You have sex with someone you love, or with someone who gets you really drunk. You lie to your parents, your boyfriend, yourself, your therapist. You cheat on your homework or do other people's homework for money. You get up, you take class, you rehearse, you perform, you go to bed. How do you decided which of these things are truly crazy and which are just being alive?

You shouldn't ask for forgiveness. Because if you ask someone to forgive you, and they do, then that's twice that you've taken something from them. First the betrayal, and then the absolution.

Everyone is in pain. Most people think pain in massage means something is happening, and if they can endure it, they will be improved, but sometimes the only thing pain means is pain.It a very easy mistake to make, though.. She__ refused for the longest time to get therapy or take any psychoactive drugs because she__ felt that the __arkness_ was necessary, not just for her as an actor, but as a human being. You didn__ have to feel slightly terrible all the time, as it turns out. Her only worry now was that slightly terrible was not a flaw in her chemistry, but an appropriate response to being the kind of person that she was. __ou__e very hard on yourself,_ Luke said. __an you imagine the kind of person that I__ be if I wasn__ hard on myself?_ she said back. Luke should be sympathetic. He was hoping to improve the human race, and it would be hard to get there if the human race thought it was already fantastic, thanks very much.Well, she could still go dark, if she needed to, she could go dark right now. Yesterday she had done Terror. She__ done Fear and Dejection and Remorse. And because she had done Remorse as fully as a person could do it, she knew that she hadn__ ever experienced that kind of pure Remorse before. What she__ felt in the past was polluted Remorse, because half the time she was sorry she was also privately resentful and building a case about why the actions that had led to Remorse could be justified.

She feels a little sad. Is she sad? Helen considers an alternative: She is dehydrated.

If only we could crawl inside our dreams and live there. Why can't I live inside my dream?

I made the sympathetic face, and the interested face, and even the impressed face. I did not say, 'In the name of all that is holy, cease this incessant drivel, you pretentious ass.

When you step from the wings onto the stage you go from total blackness to a blinding hot glare. After a moment you adjust, but there is that moment. like being inside lightning.

It's a moment to learn. This was the thing about miscalculations, errors, and mistakes. You admitted them, you used them as teachable moments, and then you moved on. You didn't forget, but you didn't dwell.

Keep making noise, I prayed, laughing. Bang drums. Clamor and ring bells for I cannot stand to hear the tired beating of this almost heart.

Although pride and obsession can feel like love, I guess.

I am here. I am in the present tense. I'm not always here, and sometimes here is a very difficult place. Sometimes it is a labyrinth, or a Minotaur, or a rope I can neither let go of nor follow. It's hard to find the right words, but I guess I would say that it's something like feeling the floor. And that it is my privilege to feel it.