Young people are cynical about love. Ultimately, cynicism is the great mask of the disappointed and betrayed heart.

you are using food as a drug, grappling with boredom or illness or loss or grief or emptiness or loneliness or rejection.

We had touched a core reality, and that embrace of love, for me, is a metaphor of the love and embrace I needed my whole life. The longing to be wanted, really wanted; to be acknowledged that I even exist and don’t have to earn the right to exist and be alive; that I am beautiful and lovable (to be held and not treated like poison)—well, what more

This can result in a profound sense of aloneness, alienation, and not belonging.