"Here’s what you do when that pile starts talking. You light a match. Light it all on fire and watch it burn with a combination of sadness and elation."
With this much self-awareness and meditation, residents such as myself tend to forget—or, rather, concentrate on forgetting—that Encinitas is also a half-marathon’s distance from the Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton, which is roughly the size of Rhode Island.
At 13, I never hear anyone use the words “slut, whore, bitch,” until they are said to me, about me. Brain damage, in one area of my skull. Straight A’s in the other.
“It's difficult to forget yourself, to put your whole life on some back burner, and give yourself to your characters. But that's what you've gotta do to get the job done.”
A year and a half ago, I started practicing yoga because I wasn’t feeling well. I could barely touch my toes and felt very self-conscious in yoga classes, but kept…