I am 14 years old, it’s the middle of the afternoon, and I’m curled into a ball at the bottom of the stairs. I’ve intended to drag my uncooperative limbs upstairs to my dark disaster of a bedroom and sleep until everything hurts a little less, but my body and brain have simply drained down. I crumple into a bony, frizzy-haired heap on the gold shag rug, convinced that the only thing I have left to offer the world is the removal of my ugly presence from it, but at that moment, I’m too exhausted to do anything about it.

I sink into unconsciousness, mumbling over and over again, “I need help… I need help… I need help.” I’m too quiet. No one hears.

Several months, countless medical tests and many slept-through school days later, a diagnosis is dispensed, along with a bottle of thick, chalky pills. There is palpable relief from my physician and parents; nothing is physically wrong with me (thank God, not the cancer they’ve quietly feared) — likely just a bout of depression. While it helps a little to have a name for the sensation, I’m less enthralled with the diagnosis, because I know it will return. While this is the first time it’s manifested heavily enough for anyone else to see it, I’ve been slipping in and out of this dull gray sweater for as long as I can remember.

Read the rest at CNN: “Going public with depression”

That’s how the cookie (and a passenger’s calm) crumbles

New York vs. Los Angeles: For all its grit, NYC ‘sparkles’

I have a big nose. If you feel like being euphemistic about it, you could call it “prominent” or “distinctive.” On the slightly more complimentary side of that, “striking” or “exotic” are options. If cruelty or comedy are your aim, hurl “schnozz”, “honker” or “beak.”

None of these words will change its size, curvature, placement or the fact that I greatly enjoy seeing it right there, jutting out from the center of my face.

This was not always the case.

Lately, a school of thought has sprung up, centered around the notion that people should reconsider how they talk to young girls. On the surface, it’s a fantastic, empowering thing, positing that young females are too frequently complimented on how pretty they are, rather than the things that count, like intelligence, creativity and self-reliance. I was never imperiled on that front. Not even close.

With a boyish bowl haircut and an outsized nose as the prow of my moon-pale face, I did not sail easily through the rites of womanhood. I was ugly and was told so, both in words and by omission. I remain unsure which was worse: being directly informed of my unattractiveness, or simply never being told I was the least bit lovely. Sure, it’s all skin deep, but it can sink in and leave a scar.

Read “Learning to love my big nose” on CNN Living

A recent Eatocracy piece about eating and drinking after 9/11 and how I commemorated the news of Osama bin Laden’s death.
Pouring whiskey in the wound