He just stood there, looking at me, as if I had actually changed before his eyes. But this was the girl I'd been all along. I'd just hidden her well.

Get back on that bike.

In the end, though, maybe it's not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.

Because anyone that can make you feel that bad about yourself is toxic.

Everyone laughed, and just like that, the conversation shifted, jumping to another topic. It was fast and furious, the talking, the emotions, the back-and-forth and forth-and-back. I realized that if I tried to focus on it too much, I got overwhelmed. So I just decided to relax into it, bumpy and crazy as it might be, and try for once to just go along for the ride.

Okay," I said, "what's your biggest fear?" As always, he took a second to think about the answer. "Clowns," he said. "Clowns." "Yup." I just looked at him. "What?" he said, glancing over at me. "That is not a real answer," I told him. "Says who?" "Says me. I meant a real fear, like of failure, of death, of regret. Like that. Something that keeps you awake nights, questioning your very existence." He thought for a second. "Clowns.

Like a blinking cursor on an empty page, it was just the first thing. The beginning of the beginning. But at least it was done.