“I remember running out the door and sitting in the hallway crying. I remember my black eyeliner dripping on my white T-shirt and leaving little dots. I remember half of me falling away, and my surprise that there always seemed another half of me to do so. What percentage of my original self was I by that point? A quarter? An eighth? A sixteenth?”

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