For many years I lived this life of dissembling, and the one I deceived was a person who had a brilliant mind, who’d made me a family, who’d been unfailingly loyal, and whose actions were never anything but in my interests. She was my champion, with devotion beyond measure. She never spoke anything but the truth, her truth! Even when I was most against her, when I believed her narrow, rigid, intolerant, destructive, and above all restrictive of the full possibilities of life, I was devoted to her.

Then she died, and I found myself in a situation I’d never known. I didn’t have to explain anything to anyone. I didn’t need Molly’s approval for anything I wanted to do. I found myself standing on a mound of years from which I could survey without shame everything that had happened, and from this vantage point of time and space I could try to understand myself. With this new curiosity, I looked at myself hard and found myself wishing a wish that mankind has had from the beginning, a hope that, as I was becoming a different person, I might start over again and live another life. I began to see that this was possible. Molly’s death had unlocked the door. My old life—personal, professional, and emotional—had died; it was done with; it was gone. I’d discredited all the needs I’d once thought vital, those over which Molly had dominion. Now, as I grew free and became myself, I developed new needs and new goals, which were my own. I was liberated.