Things can’t be only good or bad, and everyone knows that. But I find the injuries pile up because they are mine to live with, alone.  For me, that has been the most vulnerable loneliness of adulthood.  You’ll never want for voices willing to give you advice.  But in my life, there’s no one to say, “Ooof. That didn’t go as planned.” And wait with me until I laugh or cry at myself enough to stretch around the disappointments and failures, and see that their price has been strictly limited to nothing that really matters.  And in that moment of encouragement, be the bit of cosmic dust that balances the scales, miraculously embodied in the companionship of ordinary love and loss.

No one really to know the places where the lines leak, and the connections are frayed, except me.  And I am not always the best mechanic.