"Misfit" is one of Lidia Yuknavitch’s favorite words. In her beautifully harrowing, unabashedly celebratory TED talk, she says that she likes the word because it’s so literal: "it’s a person who sort of missed fitting in. Or a person who fits in badly." The weight of her past, of her string of conventionally framed failures (e.g., reeling from the effects of growing up in an abusive household, having two failed marriages, flunking out of college twice, her daughter dying the day she was born) could be assembled, isolated, symbolically deployed with one word: "misfit."
Read MoreMy Struggle with Depression & Suicidal Thoughts
In life there always seem to be a line that shouldn’t be crossed. Conversations that shouldn’t happen. Jokes that shouldn’t be made. Thoughts that shouldn’t be thought. Actions that spawn from those thoughts that should never be taken. Sometimes one can cross the line and make your way back to the safe side. Sometimes one can never uncross the line. I flirted with the line and in my mind, I crossed the line.
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