When I stumbled across this interview of Jenny Slate, and these words came across my path for the first time, the bad parts, the dark parts, the 'bent out of shape' parts felt deeply permanent in my life. The interview this quote comes from went live on YouTube on the 17th of May, 2017. On the 13th of May, 2017 I should have been celebrating my greatest achievement to date - graduating college. Instead, I sat a folding chair in an impossibly hot arena praying to a God I wasn't sure existed that I would be able to walk far enough to get up out of my chair and across the stage. In the middle of the worst flare-up of my 'throw-something-at-the-wall-and-hope-it-sticks' diagnosed chronic pain condition I mustered up what will power I had left, after battling this for nearly 5 years, and with tears in my eyes (easily misunderstood to be about the occasion) hobbled across the stage. 

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I didn't get to celebrate that day. I didn't get to celebrate accepting my first job, moving into my first apartment alone, my first day of work. I didn't get to make friends with the AmeriCorps cohort I was placed in. Because I could hardly stand for longer than a few minutes. Bent out of shape became the only way I knew my life. Bent out of shape because of 10/10 pain, because of the depression and anxiety that caused, because despite both of those things I felt like I needed to be better than I was, more skinny, more powerful, more beautiful, anything besides the shell of a human I had become. Today, 2017 has come and gone, along with 2018 and at nearly 24 years old I'm finally finding my way upright again - but as Jenny Slate inadvertently taught me; no version of myself is permanent. Welcome to the ride.