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Was this frolicking—being with the baby all day? It rearranged my soul, sure, but it didn’t exactly feel like frolicking. I wondered if the only way to make the labor of my day legible to C would be to frame it as entirely exhausting. But I did not want to create a home where the main measures of l…

When we got home from the botanic gardens that day, C was in a bad mood. I could tell from his gaze, and his posture on the couch as he swiveled toward me. I wanted to tell him about the greenhouse, the ways the baby’s eyes had tracked the flickering shadows, how good it was to feel my own pretensi…

Lying in bed, under the sloping roof of our Paris garret, C said we should get married. I said yes, because I was in love with him, and because I wanted my whole self to want something, no questions asked. I wanted that consolidation. I wanted to believe in love as a conscious decision more than an…

This was life under the shadow of the question mark. I spent long, agonizing hours on the phone with my mother, explaining my uncertainty to her, hoping she could help me decide. She asked, “What is your gut telling you?” But the question didn’t help, because my gut told me conflicting things at on…

The first time C and I talked about my eating disorder, a few weeks into our relationship, he asked me how much I’d weighed when I was sick. Partway through my response, he broke in to tell me how little his wife had weighed by the end of her life. The memory was so painful it cut through him, like…