Baggage : tales from a fully packed life / Alan Cumming.

No one ever fully recovers from their past. There is no cure for it. You just learn to manage and prioritise it. I believe the second you feel you have triumphed or overcome something, an abuse, an injury to the body or the mind, an addiction, a character flaw, a habit, a person, you have merely decided to stop being vigilant and embraced denial as your modus operandi. And that is what this book is about and for: to remind you not to buy in to the Hollywood ending. Ironically maybe, much of Baggage chronicles my life in Hollywood and how, since I recovered from a nervous breakdown at 28, work has repeatedly whisked me away from personal calamities to sets and stages around the world. It is also about marriage(s): starting with the break-up of my first (to a woman) and ending with the ascension to my second (to a man) with many kissed toads in between! But in everything, each failed relationship or encounter with a legend (Liza! X Men! Gore Vidal! Kubrick! Spice Girls!), in every bad decision or moment of sensual joy I have endeavored to show what I have learned and how I've become who I am today: a happy, flawed, vulnerable, fearless middle-aged man, with a lot of baggage.