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It seemed clear that C’s anger was protecting him from grief. It was like smacking your finger with a hammer to distract yourself from a migraine.

It took me longer to wonder if his anger was protecting me as well. Not in the obvious ways, of course. Being the object of his anger—silent and wide…

Reading a biography of Susan Sontag that winter, I put three exclamation points in the margin next to a quote from her diaries: “I’m only interested in people engaged in a project of self-transformation.” It summoned the pattern Kyle had described. But what did this pattern mean? Why did I keep pur…

In those early months of separation, my friends became my family. Or perhaps it was truer to say they always had been. I’d often been a creature turned like a compass needle toward the intoxication of falling in love. Even in sobriety. Especially in sobriety. But the weave of my everyday life had a…

How many times since her birth had I thought, I’d kill to be alone. How many times since the separation had I thought, I can’t stand to be without her. How many times, across the course of my life, had I wanted contradictory things from the universe and then convinced myself I could solve the contr…

The first time I got sober, I hated praying. It made me feel like a liar—full of greed rather than faith. I got on my knees and asked for things from a being I didn’t believe in.

The second time I got sober, I felt forgiven by prayer. It didn’t require belief. You could just get on your knees. Y…