Do my boundaries exist if I don’t voice them? - Roxane Gay

I often tell my students that fiction is about desire in one way or another. The older I get, the more I understand that life is generally the pursuit of desires. We want and want and oh how we want. We hunger.

If you survive, you have to prove it was that bad; or else, they think you are.
Surviving is some kind of sin, like floating up off the dunking stool like a witch. You have to be permanently écorchée, heart-on-sleeve, offering up organs and body parts like a medieval female saint.

The ways we are taught to be a girl start when you are very young. When you are being taught, you don't know about the points. When you are being taught to be a girl, the lessons are simply accepted-the price you pay for your curves, your holes. It's only later, when you are older, after you've been taught, that you find out about the score sheet.