But there were other things holding me back, things that had little to do with the affection or emotional support I got from Aaron. The truth is I was secretly terrified of being single in my thirties, despite my feminist posturing about independence. Besides that, I worried about being a hypocrite. How would it look if I admitted I stayed with a person I didn’t like to fuck, despite my almost religious devotion to the fruits of the sexual revolution, especially the pockets that focused on female pleasure? I couldn’t see clearly whether this was just my problem, or if this was a common feeling among women like me, who outwardly had their sexuality all figured out but privately had doubts about their lives.

It hadn’t yet occurred to me that if you keep your worries and fears and suspicions to yourself, if you travel halfway across the globe alone and still end up covering those fears and suspicions with scribbles, it’s impossible to know which parts are personal and which parts are political—or whether there’s a difference, or whether it matters. I hadn’t yet asked myself: What happens when you say your darkest thoughts out loud?