Okay, let's break this down into small, manageable parts. Let's get real on it. Let's call it what it is. There was something you loved. You loved it in the pure open-hearted way that comes from getting so exactly what you need without even asking that it seems like the object of your affections is itself perfect. I'm saying you loved it because it seemed to love you so well. It's okay, it's natural, everybody does that, everybody loves a provider. So that was the first part, the part where you loved that which met your needs.

And then that was irregularly available. 

And the thing is, the reason it was gone, the most likely reason? Is because you really didn't need it anymore. Somewhere along the line you I don't want to say lost interest but there were a lot of other things that drew your attention. Pretty things. New textures. Flavors. And that which you loved because it gave you what you needed became that which you loved because it reminded you of how you felt when you needed it. You went from loving it for what it did to loving it for how you felt about it. 

And then it was gone altogether. 

And then there you are, fist jammed against your mouth, weeping. Distraught. Casting about, as it were. And you fish up something shiny and smooth and new. A thing that makes you feel the way you used to feel when your needs were being met, a thing that you perform towards as you performed before. The crying stops. Things get hopeful. And this new thing is yours, yours, yours. Smells like comfort; is comfort. 

And then they want to take that away from you, too.

They say, oh, clever things. You're supposed to get over it. Move on. This love you imagine is deforming you in ways you can't understand. Oh grow up and stop crying. Try talking through your empty mouth, form your weak tongue around the words for how you feel, distract yourself with movement, let it go. And you want to, because everybody wants you to, but you don't want to really at all. They make a chart of how many days you can go without it, and you try to be brave but inside your mouth the sour taste of tears you don't cry and the lack of comfort, that little comfort that they insist on taking away. Why. 

And then it's gone. 

And you're … okay. That small comfort, that dummy, that idiot, your little peacemaker, whatever. I'll tell you what, you can get over it. Because here's the secret they haven't told you; the thing that makes it okay is quite simple: you loved something, but it didn't love you back. It was incapable of loving you back. So it's really, really okay to let it go. You will not starve, because it never fed you. And now you are free to find something interesting, something complicated, something real. Something delicious.

When I met you, I was crying, because it was cold. An involuntary response, I would have explained if you'd asked. Fortunately I'm a master, and it is possible that you didn't even notice.

We talked for hours. I learned so many things about you. It is my best trick, to lay myself out as on a blanket at a flea market, so obvious in terms of tarnished and broken and hidden treasures. You couldn't help but pull the trinkets from your own pocket in response, a snowglobe holding a childhood memory, a knife you'd used to cut yourself free. By nightfall I'd wrapped my blanket back up again, stuffed everything into a carpet bag, and you were showing me your scars. It is interesting how quickly one can establish intimacy, when it's needed, how fast we can go from perusing the menu to tearing flesh from the bone. 

I keep thinking about her and wanting to say something that is as deep as her feelings, something worthy of her pain and her sacrifice, her love. And because there is nothing really to say beyond the fact of herself, and nothing more important in my mind, I find myself nearly mute.

She came from the future, I start, because how else could she have continued into a future that offered her little other than one disaster, one rejection, one sad ending after another. How could she have gone on unless it is because she knew she went on. Her dedication to each thing, and failure, and dedication to the next thing, it's almost too much to bear unless I think that like me she sees the future and knows that her dedication will ever be enough but it is what she has to offer, and offer, and offer. Hands crippled by one love nevertheless reaching out in optimism? or certainty? to take up the next goal, purposeful. 

Even in love, I don't begin to understand the strength she had. To love a man who took her name when she took his; it must have felt at the time like she was the equal she knew she deserved to be.  She learned his life so that she could help him lead it; learned his language to help him preserve it. And he listened to her, believed in her, credited her. And yet when I mention her to others she is most famous for how he betrayed her, again and again. 

What would it be like, to watch your husband leave to do work you find important, to watch your son die, to write your daughter cheering letters because it's the only thing you can use to sustain her in prison? What would it be like to know you'd given up your own freedom, things you were promised with ease, in exchange for this? I mean, he won; she won. She had five years of knowing they won, but that whole five years she had to remember all the things she lost to get there. I can't imagine. Or rather I can't stop imagining. 

Going through a massive project of reorganizing all our photos, moving them from photo albums to boxes with little index cards. Nobody goes through these anymore, nobody is that interested in what I was doing 20 years ago that it needs to be in a bulky album taking up massive space. Yet I can't quite throw them out, and there's something about organizing things that makes it okay to keep them. And so here I am, writing in careful ink "Kokura, spring 1990, salarymen playing baseball outside the castle" even while I realize that if I haven't forgotten it yet I probably won't forget it ever; who are these notes for? And yet and yet.

Looking at these I realize I've always been the same, I'm like a tree, you can just read my rings and tell which years were sad and which were happy but in every picture I'm pretty much the same tree, hair longer or shorter, face wider or thinner, in a black tank top and jeans that don't look good at all, or in someone else's t-shirt and baggy pants rolled or cut to my knees, barefoot or boots. My insistence on lace-up shoes despite 20 years in cultures that make me take them off is a little odd, as is the fact that I only started wearing interesting socks about five years ago. My persistent dressing like an overweight stagehand even when I was slammin', and black has never looked good on me, though I feel good in it. The refusal to wear makeup even though everyone told me I would be pretty, because I knew I would not be pretty and I might as well spare myself the effort and the disappointment. I wanted to be menopausal when I was 18, I wanted to be excused from caring fairly early on and it shows, it shows, making faces to break the camera, see I'm not ugly it's just my face. 

And the pictures of other people, whoa. How to label this, to say "here's a person I thought I'd know forever, and now he's dead, or alive but we don't even talk; here's a woman I loved like a sister and now I can barely remember her last name." What it means to look and see how clear it is that I haven't changed, and so why have so many people disappeared, living only in these pictures? Did they change? I suppose people do. Or they get bored with my being the same, the way you can get tired of even your favorite picture if you have to look at it every day.

It is of interest now to watch people my age, women who were especially pretty in particular, but also the men, the sweetly balding men, watching with horror as their youth drains away but for me it is the same relief as a uniform: finally I don't have to decide. Or rather I seem to have decided finally already 30 years ago and now here I am. I could buy alcohol without getting carded from about age 15, which is possibly why alcohol was not particularly alluring for me. And now here I am, not merely the mother in the school play because I look older than everybody else, but the mother in real life and I may still look older than everybody else or maybe I finally look my age, I don't know. I recognize myself in these pictures but not because I haven't aged. The tree gets taller, and it's stronger or it's bowed but it's the same tree. Can you see what I mean? Do you want to see the pictures?

A bed is so good for so many things. To slide between cool cotton sheets on a summer's night. On a winter night, it is pure comfort to get into a bed that is already warm. It is cozy to make a nest of several blankets layered on each other – the fuzzy one that reminds you of childhood slumber parties. The quilt your aunt made. Or it is nice to have a thick warm comforter stuffed inside a soft flannel cover, all that warmth in one sweet weight. It is lovely to have a selection of pillows – the big one for sitting up, the small one for tucking under one ear when you curl catlike around yourself. A big one for pretending. How absolutely luxurious it is to spend almost a third of the day with things that you picked, all the softness and color of your wishes. It is healthy to keep the bed only for sleeping, but it is also, oh such a treat to pull in a thick book, under a light that is just for you, and read until the words slide into your dream and the weight of the book falling across your legs wakes you, and the light is a reach away and you slide down under the covers, the transition from pleasure to pleasure almost seamless. It is a blessing to have a bed of one's own, to wake startled from a dream and feel immediately safe, to say, "Oh, here I am" and know where that is. And while it is delicious to wake with a heavy arm across you, long fingers spread across your stomach, the heat of love, it is also fine to wake for the sunrise, the light filling the room and the whole day in front of you and a good night's sleep behind you. But first you need to get a bed.