And I would tell him, as we rise into the air, The curse is not that we cannot choose our Fates. The curse, the curse we all live under, is that we c… - Alexander Chee

And while it never felt like love or community, it had almost felt like not being alone.

For the novelists in your life I have heard it said that it is better if you pretend they do something else and that it is always attended to, and doesn’t need your attention in the slightest. And then when asked for support, muster an enormous enthusiasm.

But inside the self performing as someone who was fine was the self who was not, and the vision I'd had of my life, the one that had me wanting to scream, was a vision of how living this way, inside of this performance, had blighted my life. I felt like a tree struck by lightning a long time ago, burning secretly from the inside out, the bark still smooth to the end — the word FINE painted on it.