How did that early loss change the way you approached love and relationships?

I think sometimes you look for the parts of yourself you’ve lost in a relationship. I was twenty-three when my father died, and it was almost impossible for me to think about anything else. I would wake up in the night screaming. Then when I went back to work, I started flirting with a guy in another office cubicle over GChat. At the time I had a boyfriend of seven years, who I had neglected in the wake of my father’s death. Although nothing happened with the guy at work, the excitement and newness of that was an escape.

At first I was in so much pain that I wanted to keep someone around, a human body I could count on. But eventually, that little crush at work made me think, I don’t want to do this any more, and I broke up with my boyfriend. Being interested in someone new made me realize how fake the other relationship was. It saved me, in a way. In the wake of tragedy, sometimes desire is a bomb that can’t be denied. Fresh loss is like defogging your eyeglasses.