Wounded?” was all I could manage. “Yes,” said Pat. “And you’re wounded in the same place. That’s what fathers do if they don’t heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place.

I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.

The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.

Most things will be okay eventually, but not everything will be. Sometimes you'll put up a good fight and lose. Sometimes you'll hold on really hard and realize there is no choice but to let go. Acceptance is a small, quiet room.

What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?

I had to go on without my mother, even though I was suffering terribly, grieving her. My whole life sort of ended when my mom died. I had to remake it again and be a new person in the world without my mom. It was a very primal rebirth, that time after my mom died.