Looking back, it was definitely postpartum. I should have seen someone about it, but I didn’t. My husband didn’t do anything about it. At least, not anything to help. He was, like, What’s wrong with you? Having a child is a totally natural part of being a woman—How could it possibly take that much out of you? My mom did it. Every woman does it. Get over it— he said, just laughing. That was when I made up my mind. If this guy gets sick at some point, if he gets cancer, and he’s in real pain, I’ll be there when he’s dying, standing over him, looking down, and I’m gonna say the same things he said to me. Dying is totally natural. Get over it.

The world was saturated with regret and consolation, people and things that went before. As we walked along, something was asking me if I planned to keep on going, or if I’d finally had enough. Not like the world actually cared. This was nothing more than self-absorption. Narcissism.

Where were they coming from? Where were they going? It looked more like some strange competition than a crowd. I had the lonely feeling that I was the only one around who didn’t know the rules.

I recognize that luck, effort, and ability are often indistinguishable. And I know that, in the end, I’m just another human being, who’s born only to die.

There was always someone somewhere discovering a different life, a different experience than the day before, stepping off into uncharted territory. But I wasn’t getting anywhere. I couldn’t move; in fact, I was being pulled away, slipping further every second from the blinding light of that reality.

Things were hard when I had no one watching out for me, but at least I’d been free to do as I pleased. But what right did I have to complain? I was sick of hearing my own thoughts.

The light behind the closed curtains was growing dim. Almost night. How many more times in my life would I sit back like this and find myself transfixed by the blue of the evening? Is this what it means to live and die alone? That you’ll always be in the same place, no matter where you are? “Is that so bad?” I asked myself out loud. I don’t need to tell you that no one answered.

I felt like I’d been left behind, trapped inside the weathered skeleton of an enormous creature that had shed its flesh and skin. Then I started to feel as though it was me, that my body had become the empty husk. The feeling was more desolate than anything I’d ever felt, like I was watching myself dying, helpless to fight back, at the hands of someone who was making some kind of a big mistake.

I could see people all around me, but I almost felt like nobody could see me. I heard a train go by, rumbling down the tracks, drawing a thick line between the world and my experience.

Night came, settling with the heat, and cast some things in stark relief and others into shadow. The world was saturated with regret and consolation, people and things that went before.