So is it just human nature to believe that things happen for a reason - to find some shred of meaning even in the worst experiences?

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didn't anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened.

And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

I have a lot of empathy for women who fit their writing into the crevices of their too-busy lives, as I once did.

Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.

I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again.

I know too much; I've seen people at their worst, at their most desperate and selfish, and this knowledge makes me wary. So I am learning to pretend, to smile, to nod, to display empathy I do not feel. I am learning to pass, to look like everyone else, even though I feel broken inside.