I would have thought this would make me feel better.. getting to be the one to leave and not the one left behind. But it didn't. Not at all.

So it just wasn't in my house. Anywhere, I looked like I knew about the toilet.

Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour could make all the difference.

And so we stood there in the kitchen, my mother and I, facing off over everything that had built up since June, when I was willing to hand myself over free and clear. Now I needed her to return it all to me, with the faith that I could make my own way.

But it was too early to know: there were always more pages to go, more words to be written, before the story was over.

I've always written in first person. It gives the readers more insight.

I wanted to be somewhere else ... Someplace where the sight of me sobbing would tie me to no one and no one to me.