After A Lifetime Of Silence,

But In Some Ways, The Most Significant Choices One Makes In Life Are Done For Reasons That Are Not All That Dramatic, Not Earth-shaking At All; Often Enough, The Choices We Make Are, For Better Or For Worse, Made By Default.

My God! People Say. You Have So Much Self-control! And Later: My God. You're So, So Sick. When People Say This, They Turn Their Heads, You've Won Your Little Game. You Have Proven Your Thesis That No-body-loves-me-every-body-hates-me, Guess-i'll-just-eat-worms. You Get To Sink Back Into Your Hospital Bed, Shrieking With Righteous Indignation. See? You Get To Say. I Knew You'd Give Up On Me. I Knew You'd Leave.

There Are Women In My Closet, Hanging On The Hangers. A Different Woman For Each Suit, Each Dress, Each Pair Of Shoes. I Hoard Clothes. My Makeup Spills From The Bathroom Drawers, And There Are Different Women For Different Lipsticks.

I Grew Into It. It Grew Into Me. It And I Blurred At The Edges, Became One Amorphous, Seeping, Crawling Thing.

My Parents Say That Even As A Very, Very Little Kid, The Way That I Acted Was Dramatically Different From Other Little Kids.