But, like ivy, we grow where there is room for us. - Miranda July

I do this before I bring someone new into my life; I try to get a sense of who I am so that I can make it easier for them to know me.

Every night my plan was to make it to dawn and then feel out the options. But that was just it — there were no options. There had been options, before the baby, but none of them had been pursued. I had not flown to Japan by myself to see what it was like there. I had not gone to nightclubs and said Tell me everything about yourself to strangers. I had not even gone to the movies by myself. I had been quiet when there was no reason to be quiet and consistent when consistency didn't matter. For the last twenty years I had lived as if I was taking care of a newborn baby.

He loved me. He was a complex person with layers of percolating emotions, some of them spiritual, some tortured in a more secular way, and he burned for me. This complicated flame of being was mine.