“I fell apart with a whole new level of tragedy and drama. My room in our big old drafty house was right next to the living room, and I couldn’t bear having people that close to me. I decided I didn’t deserve windows—there was always some new thing I didn’t deserve—so I moved into the basement. Cincinnati had a record snowfall that winter, more snow than I had ever experienced in my life, and the one small window I did have was always obscured by drifts. Fair enough, I deserved that too. I found the black hole inside me and lived there.”

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