Alyssa

“His eyes were eggs of unstable crystal, vibrating with a frequency whose name was rain and the sound of trains, suddenly sprouting a humming forest of hair-fine glass spines.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“Forgetting who you are and where you are and if you're there. Getting lost in the thought that you might be imagining everything, you might be dreaming your life. You look at your hand in front of your face, surrounded by light, and your heart thrums as you think: I'm dreaming, I'm not even here, I don't exist. It is too fascinating, the thought that you aren't. The thought that if you watch the lake long enough you might disappear into the white flames of light on the blue, which seem to be just inches from your face. It sucks you in, and you stare, only a little afraid. And then you scream, startled, when your mother comes through the door. You crash back to earth. It's dark. It's evening. You're here and your mother is looking at you asking, What?”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“At a certain point, an eating disorder ceases to be "about" any one thing. It stops being about your family, or your culture. Very simply, it becomes an addiction not only emotionally but also chemically. And it becomes a crusade. If you are honest with yourself, you stop believing that anyone could "make" you do such a thing— who, your parents? They want you to starve to death? Not likely. Your environment? It couldn't careless. You are also doing it for yourself. It is a shortcut to something many women without an eating disorder have gotten: respect and power. It is a visual temper tantrum. You are making an ineffective statement about this and that, a grotesque, self-defeating mockery of cultural standards of beauty, societal misogyny. It is a blow to your parents, at whom you are pissed.
And it is so very seductive. It is so reassuring, so all-consuming, so entertaining.
At first.”
― Marya Hornbacher, Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

“The most important things to remember about back story are that (a) everyone has a history and (b) most of it isn’t very interesting.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft