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Childhood is what ended me up in the hospital and teetering on the edge of deathly alcoholism. It was really good for me to accept it. To accept all the embarrassment and the shame so I don't feel like I used to.

Augusten Burroughs

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Augusten Burroughs
Age: 59
Born: 1965
Born: October 23
Journalist
Novelist
Writer
Pittsburg
Pennsylvania
Feel
Ended
Feels
Edge
Really
Edges
Teetering
Good
Shame
Deathly
Like
Childhood
Alcoholism
Accept
Embarrassment
Accepting
Hospital
Used
Hospitals

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And I hope she does not live in a dark world. Because even the most terrible loss doesn't have to make you darker it can make you deeper.
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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.
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So that's what I'm here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven't felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green.
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My thoughts seem thick, ketchup stuck in a bottle. Like trying to feel someone's face while wearing goosedown mittens.
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I don't really think of my blog as a real blog. It's a lame blog. It's more like my when-the-mood-strikes update, or smoke signal.
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I've overcome a lot - sexual abuse, death of a loved one, bad parents and experienced life. My nature is such I not only survived all this but I have thrived. I've always been psychologically ambitious in that I've never been willing to settle emotionally for anything less then what's needed. I've wanted more then that from life.
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When I first thought of being a writer I had visions of stacks of books in stores with my name on them, that sort of thing. But I never imagined this would be the reaction.
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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!
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God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn’t press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest.
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I came to think that maybe God was what you believed in because you needed to feel you weren’t alone. Maybe God was simply that part of yourself that was always there and always strong, even when you were not.
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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.
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The more obsessed one is with getting thin, the more certain it becomes that one will never get there.
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Optimism sprouts from the knowledge that you are in control of your own life, not your past and not those around you. Part of being in control is taking responsibility for how you feel. This means not just admitting to uncomfortable feelings but then examining your circumstances to see what can be done to change these feelings at the source.
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My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit.
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Once I decided to write, to be published, I knew it would happen.
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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.
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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.
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It terrified me to consider: What if, as a grown-up, I craved another body beside me as still as this one? What then?
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I don't have a fixed routine. I write every day but I don't write every day, if that makes any sense. In other words, I email with my friends constantly and sometimes I'll pull out something I've written and save it.
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We haven't slept together. But we've napped
Augusten Burroughs