“I’ll have one fabulous relationship; hold the full spectrum of unpleasant human emotion please!”

It used to be that if anyone told me to “calm down” or “just relax,” it would bring me to the edge  “Oh, you think this is upset? Well, you haven’t seen upset!” I would declare, and there I’d go, as predicted, directly into orbit. These experiences collected and cemented my inherited belief that I was a lot — too much, too big, high-maintenance, and ultimately, perhaps, a bit crazed. Until one day I read Simone De Beauvoir’s The Second Sex ,and that was seriously the end of that!

This was about a million years ago, but I can remember it like it was yesterday: I was in the car at a stoplight with my boyfriend at the time, who just happened to become the human sacrificial straw that broke this camel’s back. He asked me quite simply why I had to be so dramatic. What I heard was, Release the Kraken!