“My brain turned against me. I felt so undeserving of companionship that if I found ways to soothe myself, I needed an imaginary enemy to dole out an equal and opposite punishment. For some reason, the real enemies weren’t enough. I had to be even meaner to myself than they were—the old “nobody can hurt me as much as I can hurt myself.” This is how the Bad Dog came to live inside me.
It spent a decade forming, gaining power. It made me fly into rages and cry hysterically at school. It ran through the threads of my nervous system. I was contaminated by it. Girls were not supposed to get as angry as I did.”

— Stacy Pershall, from “Loud in the House of Myself.”