■ My brain has been my ticket out — this ability to make jokes and tell stories. I am thankful to have this gigantic undercooked meatball inside my skull. I wish I could be like Krang in the Ninja Turtles, who’s just a brain in a big monster body. The fact that I have to be an actual person is a shame.

■ I’m not reading reviews. Even the nice ones are always sneaking in some bullshit. Unless every word is glowing and everyone in the comments is like, “I’m going to leave my spouse to marry Sam,” I don’t want to read it. It fucks your brain up.

■ I have one friend in my head that I write for, and I’m like, OK, this bitch will laugh at that.

■ I started going to a psychiatrist. She diagnosed me with OCD. I was like, “Oh, come on, girl. I don’t wash my hands that much.” That was my misunderstanding of OCD. The biggest way my OCD manifests itself is in a need to control — not other people, but my surroundings, how I’m perceived. It’s a fool’s errand, and it is exhausting. Yet I can’t not do it. If I tell you an embarrassing thing that happened, I’ve crafted a narrative around it and found the funny parts and the punch line. But if you witness me having that embarrassing moment, I would probably melt down.

■ Guilt and shame are just the worst emotions. I feel both quite often, and there’s no cure. Writing is my way of getting through it: Here is a thing society wants me to feel bad about, but I don’t.

■ With men, I never got to the point in a relationship where I felt I could fully relax and not think the other shoe was going to drop, that he wasn’t just biding his time until someone he actually wanted to be with came along. I don’t know if it’s because my wife, Kirsten, is a woman, or because Kirsten is Kirsten, but I don’t doubt her ever. I trust her implicitly, I trust her motives. I’ve never built that level of trust with a man.

■ I got diagnosed with Crohn’s disease at 28. I was single in Chicago, trying to date, and uh-oh, I have exploding asshole disease. The scariest thing about these diseases is you feel like a fucking freak. I don’t want to explain why I’m going to be in the bathroom for so long. So in the beginning, it was like, OK, if people read my blog, they’ll know what’s up.

■ My sisters don’t know how much I make, which is intentional. But the hands have been out. Nothing makes you feel more powerful than somebody you have a grudging respect for asking you to help them.

■ The thing about Ozempic is, first of all, it’s for fat people. Fat people can’t have shit. Everybody hates us. Everybody wants us to lose weight or hide, never leave our house. Then science finally comes around and gives us a thing to help us not be fat, and you can’t find it because skinny people are buying it up.

■ I went off sugar because it was making me feel like shit. I missed it like I’d miss a limb. Let me tell you, those first few days, I would have blanked a blank for a teaspoon of sugar. I’m like, What’s supposed to make me feel good? A salad? I eat them, but I do wish they were made of candy.