I’d begun at the soundless place where California touches Mexico with five Gatorade bottles full of water and eleven pounds of gear and lots of candy. My backpack was tiny, no bigger than a schoolgirl’s knapsack. Everything I carried was everything I had.

The entire time, he’d only ever looked at my body, never at my face, his empty eyes hungry, never seeing me at all. I wasn’t the presence of a person, but a body. I could have said anything, he wouldn’t have heard me. He’d never responded, not by stopping, not with his words.

Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament.

When I felt strongly I would say it strongly.

If I wanted to go to bed at ten o’clock I did. If I wanted to go to bed at six p.m., I did. I woke at sunrise because the new sun lit my eyes. The sun was my clock; my body my pace-keeper. I started walking when I wanted, kept going until precisely when I wanted to stop.When I was tired, feeling like stopping but wanting to persist, I’d listen to Blood On The Tracks.

I was going to mean what I said, to be direct and firm.I found my moleskin notebook and on the page behind the pages addressed to Never-Never and my family—two unsent letters—I wrote: I am the director of my life.

It felt amazing to make visible my boundaries.The rumors dissipated, then changed. Eventually I turned down enough men that I became the girl who turned down men.

I wanted both things: strength in my independence and also this new desire. This felt like the beginning of a new kind of love.

I wanted him to look at me like maybe I was magic.