I'm trying..." How could I put it? "I'm trying to get far enough down the line so that I can remember." I stopped, then continued: "so that I can remember without the pain killing me" And the days were stacking up. And weeks. And months. It was now almost the middle of June and he'd died in February, but I still felt like I'd just woken from a horrible dream, that I was suspended in that stunned, paralyzed state between sleep and reality where I was grasping for, but couldn't get a handle on normality.

Here's how it is: I feel guilty about every single bite of food that goes into my mouth.

My truth is that what doesn't kill you makes you weaker rather than stronger, although it makes you wiser.

I loved being in my own head so much, it was getting harder and harder being with other people.

I rang my mother to thank her for giving birth to me and she said, "What choice had I? You were in there, how else were you going to get out?

For all of my life it was the size of my rear that caused me the most hand-wringing, but in this nearly-50 zone it is my stomach that is the problem. It seems to have broken free from its moorings and there is no knowing how far it will roam.

Every day I wake up afraid that I won't be able to write, that today is the day it has left me.