She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.

My dad is a retired Shakespeare professor, my mother a retired classicist. Suffice to say I grew up in a house full of books, where reading was encouraged if not required.

In those first few hours officially single again the world seems like it expands, suddenly bigger and more vast now that you have to get through it alone.

What is family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed there, regardless.

It's so, so stupid what we do to ourselves because we're afraid. It's so stupid.

I couldn't imagine what it would be like to be one of so many, to have not just parents and siblings but cousins and aunts and uncles, an entire tribe to claim as your own. Maybe you would feel lost in the crowd. Or sheltered by it. Whatever the case, one things was for sure: like it or not, you'd never be alone.

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