Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a thirteen-year-old girl.

I just finished reading Jeffrey Eugenides's The Virgin Suicides. I am not thirteen anymore, nor do I remember slashing my wrists and dragging chests down the stairs to use as a kick-stool, but I can understand the rage and unpronounceable pain of being a teenage girl. Up to until a year ago I remember cherishing how bad it felt, how everything just sucked. An older friend and mentor told me that I was in love with pain, that I had a full awareness of how pain could be a struggle. It sounded nice, coming from him, but after a while the pain dulls you and then suddenly, you just don't feel anything anymore. These days, everything around me just reverberates with air, thin hollow air that neither stiffles nor chokes you. As if pain decided to pack her things up and left, taking everything with her.