I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.

I have been missing the point. The point is not knowing another person, or learning to love another person. The point is simply this: how tender can we bear to be? What good manners can we show as we welcome ourselves and others into our hearts?

Maybe people are more like the earth than we know. Maybe they have fault lines that sooner or later are going to split open under pressure.

What they don't know is that I went over the edge years ago, and lived to tell the tale.

I never claimed to be a low-maintenance gal, but when I'm writing, it's particularly challenging. I lose things constantly: my watch, my glasses, my papers, my mind.

When I'm reading, wherever I am, I'm always somewhere else.

I now know that things I always thought I could depend on can crash in an instant. Because of the love that I have been shown, I now know what it means to be 'beloved.' I now know that no breath is to be taken for granted.