In both places, whenever she was “alive”—happy, noisy, full of energy, excited, exuberant, sexual—she was labeled a “bad girl.” But whenever she was “dead” or nonliving—quiet, sick, depressed, and showing none of the other signs of “life”—she was labeled a “good girl.” She learned that to be alive was bad and to be nonliving was good. To be accepted by her world, she had had to be personally powerless and not alive.
