My brain goes very easily into the darkness. It always has. There are people who like to see what's under the rock and people who don't, and for some reason I've always been one of those to say, 'Hey, let's flip over that rock.'

Love makes you want to be a better man. But maybe love, real love, also gives you permission to just be the man you are.

Sometimes I think illness sits inside every woman, waiting for the right moment to bloom. I have known so many sick women all my life. Women with chronic pain, with ever-gestating diseases. Women with conditions. Men, sure, they have bone snaps, they have backaches, they have a surgery or two, yank out a tonsil, insert a shiny plastic hip. Women get consumed.

The question I've asked more often during our marriage, if not out loud, if not to the person who could answer. I supposed these questions storm cloud over every marriage: What are you thinking how are you feeling? Who are you? What have we done to each other? What will we do?

People love talking, and I have never been a huge talker. I carry on an inner monologue, but the words often don't reach my lips.

Everytime people said I was pretty, I thought of everything ugly swarming beneath my clothes.

I've always believed clear-eyed sobriety was for the harder hearted.