Content Warning: The source material and this guide include references to alcohol and drug use, as well as sexual, physical, verbal, and emotional abuse, including the sexual abuse of minors by adults. The book references PTSD and ADHD. Mentions of suicide, possible attempted suicides, and self-harm and self-medication are also included.

“I’m not bragging or complaining about it, just telling you: This is my brain. It has a lot to do with how this whole book thing is going to play out, because I love run-on sentences—and dashes. And sentence fragments. I’m probably going to jump around a lot while I tell the story.”

With these words, Hilton expresses two key points for her reader. First, she establishes a theme that is prevalent throughout the book, The Blessings and Hardships of ADHD. Her brain is wired differently, and this has created a recurring conflict in her life, whether at school or around the people she cares about. She clarifies that she no longer looks down on herself for her ADHD; she embraces it. Secondly, Hilton establishes the nonlinear structure of her book as a result of her ADHD and her need to reveal her true self to the reader and to the world.

“In the context of a technological renaissance, the story of my life makes perfect sense.”

These words demonstrate the degree to which Hilton believes technology has influenced and been involved in her life. She says that technological change in society works well with her ADHD brain, but also that her adolescence without cell phones worked in her favor. The evolution of technology has moved along with Paris as she enters different stages of her life.

“We’d always been close, but now we were feeling some of the friction burn that happens naturally between moms and teenage daughters. Mom was super conservative; I was super not.”

These words describe the beginning of the complications that arise in the relationship between Kathy and Hilton. The two will be at odds for years, and Hilton will have a strained relationship with her mother at times after she is released from the residential schools.