Sticking to a diet required me to have a permanently low self-esteem. But happily, I developed other skills beyond a fluctuating weight, eventually building up a different source of self-worth.

My views are very fluctuating. I have very contradictory takes on the subject. Dating is easier, while marriage is hard work. You see your friends having early divorces, and on the other hand, you see your parents having a successful marriage.

Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.

Sticking to a diet required me to have a permanently low self-esteem. But happily I developed other skills beyond a fluctuating weight eventually building up a different source of self-worth.