I don’t remember most of Autumn, because I lost my mind late in the summer and for a long time after that, I wasn’t in my body. I was a lightbulb buzzing somewhere far.

After the doctor told me I was dying, and after the man I married said he didn’t love me anymore, I chased a miracle in California and sixteen weeks later, I got it. The cancer was gone. But when my brain caught up with it all, something broke.

There is a Jamaican woman I know, with rivers on her face, who tells the story of God. In the very beginning, there was a vast and damp emptiness. The world was without form, and void. Only darkness in every direction. Sounds a lot like my world. Maybe like yours.

Two days before my 29th birthday, I made a clay bowl on a potter’s wheel. I found that it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been at it, one wrong move can make a carefully crafted piece suddenly unrecognizable, thudding around like a flat tire. Then the only choice you’ve got is to take the clay off and start over.