Not all at once. Not in a way you can point to and say, there, that’s when it happened. It is slower than that. Quieter. More like what I once called a strategic thinning. A leaving that does not require a suitcase. I learned early that pain does not always announce itself in a way others recognize. Sometimes it shows up as discomfort you cannot quite name. Sometimes as tension in the body. Sometimes as a question you do not yet have the language to ask. And when you try, whe

Recently, I watched my cat dive headfirst into a cardboard box filled with packing peanuts. In seconds, he transformed a simple shipping...