Operation Self-Esteem — Day Fucking One. - Elizabeth Gilbert

Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit.

In desperate love, we always invent the characters of our partners, demanding they be what we need of them, and then feeling devastated when they refuse to perform the role we created in the first place.

I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another early bedtime in Rome. Another long night's sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrase books and dictionaries. I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone. Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees, and press my forehead against the floor. There I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks. First in English. Then in Italian. And then — just to get the point across — in Sanskrit. And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment where this entire story began — a moment that also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying.