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My Instinct Was Always Have Your Gun In Your Hand. Especially When You Are Telling Somebody To Do Something. But, In Fact, The Police Academy Discourages This. They Feel Your Gun Should Rarely, If Ever, Be Brought Out Of Its Holster. Most Certainly Not When Children Are Involved, Which Is Exactly When I Saw Myself Using My Gun Most Often. A Truant Teenager Loitering Outside A Movie Theater Is Going To Be Far More Motivated To Return To School When He Has The Barrel Of A .45 Pressed Against His Cheek.

-Augusten Burroughs

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My Instinct Was Always

Augusten Burroughs

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My Instinct Was Always Have Your Gun In Your Hand. Especially When You Are Telling Somebody To Do Something. But, In Fact, The Police Academy Discourages This. They Feel Your Gun Should Rarely, If Ever, Be Brought Out Of Its Holster. Most Certainly Not When Children Are Involved, Which Is Exactly When I Saw Myself Using My Gun Most Often. A Truant Teenager Loitering Outside A Movie Theater Is Going To Be Far More Motivated To Return To School When He Has The Barrel Of A .45 Pressed Against His Cheek.

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The Truth Is That Nobody Is Owed An Apology For Anything. Apologies Are Lovely When They Happen. But They Change Nothing. They Do Not Reverse Actions Or Correct Damage. They Are Merely Nice To Hear.

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To Me, These People Were As Exotic As Animals In A Zoo. I'd Never Seen Anything Like Them. I Wasn't Sure Whether I Wanted To Be One Of Them Or Simply Live Among Them Taking Notes And Photographs.

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I Realized I Could Really Become Hooked On These Happy Pills. They Gave Me A Glorious Feeling Of General Well-being And Didn't Make Me Fat, Like Alcohol. I Wondered If There Was Any Harm In Being Addicted To Only These.

With My Own Memoirs, They Are Truthful, And I Write Everything Fully Expecting To Some Day End Up Televised On Court Tv, And I'm Fully Prepared To Be Challenged Legally On It. Everything I Write Is The Truth And I Know That I Would Win.

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After I Got My Coffee, I Leaned Against A Stop Sign And Sipped, Pretending It Was A Normal Day And I Was Only Up This Early So That I Could Go Running And Not Because I'd Just Been On A Killing Spree.

I Used To Feel So Alone In The City. All Those Gazillions Of People And Then Me, On The Outside. Because How Do You Meet A New Person? I Was Very Stunned By This For Many Years. And Then I Realized, You Just Say, "hi." They May Ignore You. Or You May Marry Them. And That Possibility Is Worth That One Word.

Time Moves Only Forward, Never Back. We Look Forward To A Moment And Then It Arrives And An Instant Later It Is Gone. Like Something On The Surface Of A River That We Reached For But Did Not Touch In Time And It Carried On, Away. You Cannot Be A Prisoner Of Your Past Against Your Will. Because You Can Only Live In The Past Inside Your Mind.

You Cannot Be A Prisoner Of Your Past Against Your Will. Because You Can Only Live In The Past Inside Your Mind.

I Know Exactly How That Is. To Love Somebody Who Doesn't Deserve It.

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I Was Like A Packet Of Powdered Sea Monkeys And They Were Like Water.

Because I've Lived In One Room My Entire Life, Working At The Same Table That You Use To Pay Bills At And Eat At. It's Going To Be Nice To Have Actual Space.

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Everybody In Recovery Smokes. If You Don't Like Smoking, Don't Even Bother Trying To Get Sober. Just Stay Drunk.

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In Order For Us [people] To Progress, We Need Brilliance And Brilliance Isn't Fair And It's Not Polite And We Can't Grow It. It Happens. Genius Happens And It Doesn't Always Happen In A Zip Code Where We Can Access It. Therefore, We Kind Of Need [internet] Not To Keep Tabs On Everybody But We Need To Give Them Access To Everybody Else.

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Confidence Is A Reduction Of Your Own Interest In Whether Others Are Thinking About You And If So, What They're Thinking.

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My Attraction Had Been Immediate And Profound. And It Had Nothing To Do With The Way He Looked. My Attraction Was To What Resided Between His Lines.

I Was On The Cover Of A Lot Of Newspapers. I Was On The Cover Of Usa Today For Every Single Day For A Month. I Was On The Masthead, So I Tend To Get Recognized A Lot, And In Weird Places. It's Always Flattering, And It's Always Odd. It's Always At The Worst Possible Time.

So We Can Be Filled With Holes And Loss And Wide Expanses Of Unhealed Geography - And We Can Also Be Excited By Life And In Love And Content At The Exact Same Moment.

I Love You," She Said, And I Knew She Meant It Because She Spoke The Words From The Heart At The Center Of Her Chest. This, At Least, Had Not Been Left Behind At The Hospital.

When You Have Your Health, You Have Everything. When You Do Not Have Your Health, Nothing Else Matters At All.

He Was Raised Without A Proper Diagnosis.

The Truth About Not Having Everything You Need, Not Being Fully Equipped Or Qualified Or Allowed Is That These Limits Are The Nebula Of Creative Genius. When You Have Total Freedom I.e: No Limits At All. You Stop Trying To Make The Best Of Things

I Missed Him So Much That I Had Physical Sensations Of Loss, All Over My Body. Like One Minute I Was Missing An Arm, The Next My Spleen. It Was Making Me Feel Sick, Like Throwing Up.

People Generally Like Happy Endings, Which Is Something I Learned From My Years In Advertising. I Like Happy Endings Myself, But Only If They're Honest. I'm Just As Happy With A Terrible, Hopeless Ending.

Fact: Upon Locking Yourself Our Of Your Apartment You Will Immediately Need To Use The Bathroom. Fact: And Then You Will Stand In Place And Watch Your Door. You Will Just Stare. As Though Rebuffed By It. As Though It Has Done This To You.

A Lot Of Being A Writer Doesn't Have Anything To Do With Writing. It's Ironic - I Have To Squeeze The Books In, Even Though That's What It's All About.

The Most I Would Do Was Use The Shadow Tool In Photoshop To Bring Out The Muscular Rips In My Stomach, Which Were Honestly There. Beneath The Fat.

Reading Takes Solitude And It Takes Focus.

And She's A Nurse. Do You Know How Hard Nursing School Is? It's Like Medical School. So She's Obviously Smart.

I Was Learning That If I Lived Slightly In The Future-what Will Happen Next-i Didn't Have To Feel So Much About What Was Going On In The Present.

But Even With My Minimal Amount Of Fame, There Are Certain Perks. Recently, I Was At A Movie Premier, And At The Party After The Movie, Meryl Streep Was Loose, Walking Around The Room Like A Normal Person. Absolutely Nothing Was Preventing Me From Lunging Toward Her And Shrieking "dingoes Ate My Baby! Dingoes Ate My Baby!

But I Can Also Write In Crappy Motel Rooms, While Standing In Line, Or Sitting In The Dentist's Chair.

Tracy, The Leader Of The Cdh Group, Looks At Me With Eyes That Seem To Belong To Someone Three Times Her Age. It's Something Beyond Wisdom, All The Way To Insanity And Back. It's Like Her Eyes Are Scarred From All The Things She's Seen.

I Knew That If I Wrote A New Book Every Six Months Or Every Year, If I Continued To Read Great Books, Eventually I Would Write Something Worthy Of Publication. I Understood I Might Be In My Forties Or My Fifties Or Even My Sixties, But I Felt Confident That It Would Happen.

Some Damage Is Too Severe, Some Harm Endures. And What You Have To Do Is Accept It. And By Accept It I Mean, Don’t Be The Paralyzed Person In The Bed Who Is Waiting To Walk Again. Realize, It’s Never Gonna Happen. And Find Some Other Way To Get Around –swing From A Vine, Get A Mad Max Wheelchair. Anything But…wait.

[christmas] Holidays Are A Heavy, Heavy Time. We Make Light Of Them With Our Red And Green And Our Stockings And Candy Canes, But People Think Heavy Thoughts Over The Holidays Because That's When You're Thinking About Family. Are We Close? Or Are We Not As Close As Other People?

The More Obsessed One Is With Getting Thin, The More Certain It Becomes That One Will Never Get There.

Bad News Should Be Followed With Soup. Then A Nap.

If I Were Blind I'd Rather Have Another Blind Person Leading Me Around Because They Know What I'm Dealing With And They're Experiencing The Same Things.

Nothing Made Sense To Me Anymore. I Knew I Was Young, I Knew I Was Small. But I Was Worried That I Might Already Be Ruined.

I'm Like The Guy Who Prepares Your Taxes Or A Dentist. I'm Very Conservative And Boring In A Lot Of Ways.

I Told Myself, 'all I Want Is A Normal Life'. But Was That True? I Wasn't So Sure. Because There Was A Part Of Me That Enjoyed Hating School, And The Drama Of Not Going, The Potential Consequences Whatever They Were. I Was Intrigued By The Unknown. I Was Even Slightly Thrilled That My Mother Was Such A Mess. Had I Become Addicted To Crisis? I Traced My Finger Along The Windowsill. 'want Something Normal, Want Something Normal, Want Something Normal', I Told Myself.

Nobody's Trying To Kill You, Deirdre. You're Killing Yourself.

Killing Yourself

In The Same Way That A Tornado Rips The Roof Off A Double-wide Trailer, Leaving The Occupants Dazed And Staring At The Clouds From The Splinters Of What Used To Be Their Living Room, It Was Over.

But She Did Love Him. I Believe It. I Know Exactly How That Is. To Love Somebody Who Doesn't Deserve It. Because They Are All You Have. Because Any Attention Is Better Than No Attention.

What I Think Of Blogs Is Just This: Some Are Beautifully Written And Many Are Not. But Even Blogs That Aren't Necessarily "well" Written Are Great For The Person Writing Them.

I Hate Feelings. Why Does Sobriety Have To Come With Feelings?

I Don't Think Writers - In General - Ever Achieve The Fame Of Movie Stars. For The Simple Reason That Only A Fraction Of The Population Reads. But I Guess There Are Exceptions.

When People Meet Me, Many Times They're Very Surprised Because They Expect Someone Who Is Kind Of Wacky With Seven Piercings And Very Hip And Cool And New York City, And I'm Not.

Even Painfully Shy And Awkward People Are Not Painfully Shy Or Awkward When They Are Alone. The Way To Access This Natural, Comfortable Alone-self When You Are With Others Is By Choosing To Forbid Yourself To Wonder What "they" Are Thinking. Instead, Force Yourself To Exist In The Instant, Then Take It- And Give It- As It Comes.

I Wouldn't Want To Waste Any Of My Brain Cells On Forgiving If It's Holding Me Back.

The Most Mortifying Fact Of My Life Is Something That Happened When I Was Fourteen And I Have Never Admitted To Anyone: Not To Friends Nor Therapists; Not Even In Rehab When We Were Detailing Our Own Personal Spirals Of Shame Did I Confess. It Is This: I Am A Graduate Of The Barbizon School Of Modeling.

Red Hair Is Great. It's Rare, And Therefore Superior.

As A Child, I Was Never Drawn Toward Depraved Or Extreme Situations; I Really Wanted A Normal Little Childhood. Unfortunately, That's Just Not What Happened.

And I Began To Let Him Go. Hour By Hour. Days Into Months. It Was A Physical Sensation, Like Letting Out The String Of A Kite. Except That The String Was Coming From My Center.

I Felt A Bottomless Sadness. So Completely Alone. Like One Of My Stuffed Animals At Home That I Was Too Old For Now, That Sat On The Shelf In My Closet, Mashed Against The Back Wall.

Not Crazy In A 'let's Paint The Kitchen Bright Red!' Sort Of Way. But Crazy In A 'gas Oven, Toothpaste Sandwich, I Am God' Sort Of Way. Gone Were The Days When She Would Stand On The Deck Lighting Lemon-scented Candles Without Then Having To Eat The Wax.p28

Most Of Us Have Love In Our Lives. Most Of Us Love Other People Are Are Ourselves Loved By Others. But Make No Mistake: You Are Alone In The World. You Were Born Alone, Even If You Were Born Conjoined. And You Die Alone, Unable To Bring A Single Person With You.

Saying Just The Right Thing After A Considerable, Awkward Pause Is Far Less Effective Than Saying The Wrong Thing With Perfect Timing. I'm Telling You.

But My Favorite Band Is Curbside Life, Out Of Chicago.

Our Lives Are One Endless Stretch Of Misery Punctuated By Processed Fast Foods And The Occasional Crisis Or Amusing Curiosity.

Once I Decided To Write, To Be Published, I Knew It Would Happen.

I Think I Love Him, But I Also Think That You Can Love People Who Aren't Good For You.

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