We spoke in bullshit symphonies. Every crescendo, every decrescendo, every sonata, every sound between us was just another beautiful lie.

The Way We Were - Short Story Excerpt Four

“Go,” he said.

It was one of those conversations that’d been happening for months, those that never really begin, those with no end in sight. He and I’d danced back and forth, our bodies moving together then slowly breaking apart, tangled in a days-long waltz with no final step.

“Go,” he said again.

For the first time we’d both stopped moving. I knew then that the dance was done; the weight of his words hung heavy, so heavy that neither of us could move. His face was resigned, tired, plastered with loss. I’d never seen a face so suited for sorrow.

“Go,” he said, the last time.

I held him the way you hold someone you’ll never hold again, tightly, desperate to squeeze out of him what was left to take. He held me with just his body. I held him with my soul. When I let go, he was buried so deep inside himself. I don’t think he even saw me leave.

“This was what you wanted,” the voice inside my head told me. “This is exactly what you need.”

If only I’d known I’d end up here, desperate to dance once again.

Foreigners - Personal Essay Excerpt

On that rooftop, our hearts were sure of each other. We spent the night talking and laughing and we wore no masks, expressions of tenderness gushing out of us.

When I found my way home in the early hours of the morning light, I couldn’t stop smiling. I wondered if it was enough to know that home is here for me when I need it, always waiting for my return. If I would weather changes and storms, but always find solace here. When I would be ready to return permanently, when the cycle of life would have run it’s course, when I’ll end up where I began. I wondered if I had no choice but to look for home everywhere I go.

There is one thought that remains clear, the last thing I remember thinking before sleep stole me.

Maybe it is true that once you leave home you can never come home again. But maybe the truth is that that some part of us never leaves home. That home lives locked inside. That home has place in us, looking for it’s reflection everywhere we go and in everyone we meet.

And so, even with still oceans and tender miles between us, we are never as far from home as we think.

The Way We Were - Short Story Excerpt Three

Everything around me feels fast and thoughtless. I'm thoughtless, too. I can’t feel my body anymore. I’m so grateful. When I can still feel my body I can still hear my keeper, and when I can still hear my keeper, I can't dance like this.

The Rolling Stones "Under My Thumb" is playing on the jukebox, and it's my favourite song forever from now on. My body that I can see beneath me, but that I can't feel, is moving with a harmonized surrender.    

My feet move in shuffles from side to side. My head goes up and down, back and forth. When I lift it up towards the ceiling, I can feel that my face doesn't look how it usually does. I'm not putting anything on. There is a rawness that surrounds me. I notice my hands floating all around. They surprise me every time because I'm not instructing them to go anywhere. They just move.

Everyone I know thinks I'm a good dancer, but I'm not. I'm just a good performer and I've always been very good at faking. Before this summer when I'd dance, I was moving how my keeper told me I should move, how she wanted other people to see me move. It wasn't fun at all, but I used to take comfort in following her orders.

That's my secret.

Well, that's our secret. Nobody knows she exists, except her and I. She's gone now. She’s far away. I told her and her liquid sounds to leave me alone this summer. At first I was worried that I wouldn't know what to do without her. That I'd keep talking to no one in particular, a parrot in sweat pants, asking "Will I be okay?"

Crutches - Personal Essay Excerpt

After that night, I didn’t have a drink or a date for six months. My relationship with alcohol had died a hard death. Simultaneously, I finally realized that no man was going to make me happy, and any man worthwhile, I wasn’t ready for.

I don’t know if it’s that I’m stronger than some other people with addictions, than other people who can’t give up their crutches. I don’t know if I am just lucky, that I was born with the foresight to see all I was losing. I don’t know if I had finally become so ashamed of myself that I had no choice but to change.

I could have gone either way. I could have easily continued down a path where I let the fire inside go out. I could have been lost, as Ayn Rand says, “in hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all.” I know I was one kiss, one drink, one mistake away from losing everything, forever.

The strange thing is that I don’t wish that I had never fallen so deep into men or alcohol. Yes, I have been bent and broken, but into better shape. The irony of life is that your greatest pains become your strengths if you want them to.



In the dark parts of my memories, there’s artwork. If the heartbreak hadn’t been so heavy, I wouldn’t have written that short story the day he didn’t want to see me. That short story wouldn’t have turned into a book. That book wouldn’t have lead to this book. I didn’t know it, but opportunity had disguised itself as misfortune. My antagonists were my heroes, I just couldn’t recognize them in their costumes. I’ve manipulated to live and breath on these pages. They gave me gifts greater than I’d ever known.

Without the alcoholism, I would never know the clarity of sobriety. I needed that dark to appreciate the light, to see that darkness illuminated everywhere, to realize they didn’t exist without one another. That’s the symbiotic beauty of this charming world; I didn't know good until I'd lost myself in bad.

So when the darkness comes, let it inside you.