“One night I sat on Reese’s bed, naked, shivering, and he told me I was just too much of an actress for him.
“What?” I squeaked, as my vision narrowed to that pinprick that precedes impending doom, the one where you know everything is about to change and you are in the last remaining seconds of the reality to which you have become accustomed.
“You just…sometimes you’re just too intense. Like you’re always acting.”
Of all the words in the world I hate, intense may very well be the one I hate the most. It is certainly the one which, when leveled at me, carries with it the shame of all the times I’ve heard it before, and embarrasses me like a small child who has just peed her pants.”

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