I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home

If you choose this life, if you choose to be this way, you will get the bare minimum. An implication that I deserved only that. Ah, the impregnability of capitalism.

I didn’t tell them that I feared at every moment that this new kind of freedom would be taken away from me, that at any moment any of our freedom could be gone.

I could still feel the release of this weight I had carried for so long—forever? No. Not forever. Years, though. But I would be someone else now.

I had been hiding myself, even though I was living a much more public existence.

Being a smart girl is always better. This I know and can promise. Being a smart girl means you can always take care of yourself. Being a smart girl means you can figure shit out. Being a smart girl means your self-worth does not alter with time.

I was creative and I was curious and there was a propulsiveness to my life—I was completely engaged in forward motion—yet I had no specific direction.

Eventually, my brain goes on strike. My brain says: You need to feel better about yourself. You need to put yourself in a situation where you can succeed more days than not, and the times you feel most successful are when you are sitting quietly at your desk, doing your work, writing your books, contemplating your characters, thinking about the why

That there could be a simple pleasure in just existing sounded so foreign to me.

My wings were clipped so intensely I could feel the blood dripping right off them.