I'd been through so much, falling short again and again, and only recently had found a place where who I was, right now, was enough.

You need demarcation." "Demarcation?" I asked. "It means a clear separation between two things," he told me. "A solid end before a clean beginning. No murky borders. Clarity.

Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that, despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise.

But those words were only the middle of the story. There was a beginning here, too.

Some people, they can't just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don't know. I didn't want to fix it, to forget. It wasn't something that was broken. It's just...something that happened. And like that hole, I'm just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time.

There was something so heavy about the burden of history, of the past. I wasn't sure I had it in me to keep looking back.

So I learned another system: When in doubt, keep it out – out of earshot, out of the house – even if this meant, really, just keeping it in.