The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk … - Cheryl Strayed

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

My pack rose up like a mantle behind me, towering several inches above my head, and gripped me like a vice all the way down to my tailbone. It felt pretty awful, and yet perhaps this was how it felt to be a backpacker.
I didn't know.
I only knew that it was time to go, so I opened the door and stepped into the light.