Prologue

I’m full of something tonight. Belief in myself. Delusions of grandeur, maybe. But it’s not a mansion I’m plotting to buy. It’s not another country I’m hoping to move to. It’s right here, under the beautiful, light blue sky in twilight with silver clouds, a thin, gray tabby darting in front of me, sitting atop the elegant stone steps of the Sheldon where I believe I can write my own story, beautiful and affecting, in my own city, in the capital of the state of my birth where I’ve chosen to make my life, where my family remains. It is twilight, and as the sky darkens, I make a promise to myself that I can keep. It’s not that I will “live up to my potential,” though doing whatever that means would be nice. It is simply to care for myself, to have patience with myself as I tell and shape the only story that is truly only mine to tell. Only I have the full power to affirm all my previous decisions, my claim to rich and stable life full of the promise of self-understanding, of staking my claim as the rightful owner of the beauty of my own existence, best positioned to render the complexity and simplicity of how I arrived on these steps, under the silvering night sky, surrounded by the lush green richness of one of the wettest, most storm and tornado-filled springs on record, nearing the heat of the summer in which I promise to give the art of my own life my best attention.