And I was so tired of being afraid all the time. It felt like I had been afraid and afraid without stopping forever. I did not even know how afraid I had been

When we left for the hospital to have our first child, that was our cozy Mission district nest. When we got home, sleep-deprived and terrified, with a six pound baby girl, her eyelids thin as membranes and her fists clenched on air, that house was a wreck, an unmaintained hovel with a deathtrap fire escape and peeling lead paint at toddler eye level.

They are dead. I am alive. What I feel standing on the grass of their grave isn’t release, not exactly. It’s grief, but not a bad kind.

When I drink anything out of a martini glass I feel untouched by professional and sexual rejection.