Is Middle Age Apologizing For The Terrible Person You Used to Be?

Or is it finally about growing up?

In 2007, when I worked at HarperCollins and I was kind of an asshole.

When I was small, I wanted the world to move. One summer in Sunset Park, I swam from one end of a sixteen-foot pool to the other. For hours, I cleaved through the water until my body burned. Until I had whittled down to brittle bone. Tawny and hungry was a look I was going for. And there would be moments when we were flush. Maybe a check was cashed or a dollar pinched from a pant pocket, and we would flee to the hot dog stand and devour that hot meat and soft bun until our faces were slicked and glossed and our stomachs full.

Our hearts were pulpy back then, flush with love even though our bank accounts were anemic. But it was Brooklyn, 1987, and my friends teased me. Girl, you can write. Write about me, they all chorused, elbowing their way into the pages of my small spiral notebook. Teachers would pull me aside and tell me the same thing. I didn’t understand what I had was a gift, it never felt like it. More like a thimble of water in the Sahara.

More like I had a tool that would help me make sense of a world where a strange man stood over my bed and watched my sleep. We liked watching your daughter sleep they told my mother over a telephone line when she didn’t pay the sharks their interest. Watch the sharks circle and…