You’re like Marilyn Monroe,’ Ken tells me, which I take as a compliment and say a nervous “Thank You”. Interrupting, he adds, ‘You’re all velvet and Velcro. Men want you because you’re sexy and broken and when it gets too rough they can say “Hey! This toy is broken!” and toss you aside without feeling bad.

In other words, it was a struggle with himself. And the product of that struggle: anger, bitterness, resentment, envy or transformation, aspiration, hope, decency..the product of that struggle is the quality of your life and the nature of your soul.

He was only twenty-five.He was young enough to miss his youth just as it was slipping away. The worst kind of loss-the one that is happening as you feel it.

I envied women with signature hair-dos, signature perfumes, signature sign-offs. Novelists who tell Vogue Magazine: “I can’t live without my Smythson notebook, Pomegranate Noir cologne by Jo Malone and Frette sheets”. In the grip of madness, materialism begins to look like an admirable belief system.

I still believe that you truly find yourself not in travel, but in other human souls.

Cyndi Lauper was hilarious and generous, someone I'd loved from childhood who didn't disappoint.

Of course he freaked me out. Of course it's nothing to do with me. But none of that matters. He loved me and now he doesn't. I was everything to him and now I am nothing.