I Have Many Problems In My Life,

Is Love This Misguided Need To Have You Beside Me Most Of The Time? Is Love This Safety I Feel In Our Silences? Is It This Belonging, This Completeness?

I Had People Read It Early On And, You Know, Well-meaning People Said To Me, You Should Take Out The Blogs. I Didn't Get Much Positive Feedback. Only Because Most Of These People Were Protective Of Me - It Was Sort Of Like A "tone It Down, Make It Easier To Swallow" Kind Of Thing. And I Just Thought If I Do That Then It's Not The Book I Want To Write.

She Rested Her Head Against His And Felt, For The First Time, What She Would Often Feel With Him: A Self-affection. He Made Her Like Herself.

Her Blog Was Doing Well, With Thousands Of Unique Visitors Each Month, And She Was Earning Good Speaking Fees, And She Had A Fellowship At Princeton And A Relationship With Blaine - "you Are The Absolute Love Of My Life," He'd Written In Her Last Birthday Card - And Yet There Was Cement In Her Soul. It Had Been There For A While, An Early Morning Disease Of Fatigue, Shapeless Desires, Brief Imaginary Glints Of Other Lives She Could Be Living, That Over The Months Melded Into A Piercing Homesickness.

At About The Age Of Seven … I Wrote Exactly The Kinds Of Stories I Was Reading: All My Characters Were White And Blue-eyed, They Played In The Snow, They Ate Apples, And They Talked A Lot About The Weather: How Lovely It Was That The Sun Had Come Out. This Despite The Fact That I Lived In Nigeria; We Didn’t Have Snow, We Ate Mangoes, And We Never Talked About The Weather, Because There Was No Need To.