We teach girls shame; close your legs, cover yourself, we make them feel as though by being born female they're already guilty of something.

All over the world, there are so many magazine articles and books telling women what to do, how to be and not to be, in order to attract or please men. There are far fewer guides for men about pleasing women.

She rested her head against his and felt, for the first time, what she would often feel with him: a self-affection. He made her like herself.

I didn't know I was even supposed to HAVE issues until I came to America

Her blog was doing well, with thousands of unique visitors each month, and she was earning good speaking fees, and she had a fellowship at Princeton and a relationship with Blaine - "You are the absolute love of my life," he'd written in her last birthday card - and yet there was cement in her soul. It had been there for a while, an early morning disease of fatigue, shapeless desires, brief imaginary glints of other lives she could be living, that over the months melded into a piercing homesickness.

Our histories cling to us. We are shaped by where we come from.

Is love this misguided need to have you beside me most of the time? Is love this safety I feel in our silences? Is it this belonging, this completeness?