I didnt always have things, but I had people. I had a mother and a father who I would match against any other. [...] I had friends who would leap in front of a bus for me. You need to know that I was loved, that whatever my lack of religious feeling, I have always loved my people and that broad love is directly related to the specific love I feel for you.

So there was love, and specifically the desire to give to someone who had given so much to me. But too there was a need to liberate myself from old models. I did not want a good woman behind me, beside me, in front of me, or proximate to me in any of the old and maudlin ways.

Dad called it "enlightenment" but to me, it just felt lonely.

What did I know of loving anything, beyond a longing, beyond being biased in one woman's direction.

I had not been prepared for the simple charm of watching someone you love grow.

Ideas like cosmic justice, collective hope, and national redemption had no meaning for me. The truth was in the everything that came after atheism, after the amorality of the universe is taken not as a problem but as a given. It was then that I was freed from considering my own morality away from the cosmic and the abstract. Life was short, and death undefeated. So I loved hard, since I would not love for long.

Ideas like cosmic justice, collective hope, and national redemption had nomeaning for me. The truth was in the everything that came after atheism, afterthe amorality of the universe is taken not as a problem but as a given. It was thenthat I was freed from considering my own morality away from the cosmic andthe abstract. Life was short, and death undefeated. So I loved hard, since I wouldnot love for long.

What I am telling you is that you do not need to know to love, and it is right that you feel it all in any moment. And it is right that you see it through--that you are amazed, then curious, then belligerent, then heartbroken, then numb. You have the right to all of it.