But I remember the place with fondness ... not perfect but, all in all, not a bad memory.

There are photographs of people you don't recognize and photographs of you in ways you don't wish to be remembered, but they each contain elements of places or times you do not wish to forget.

But for a long time, and probably far too long, I had a secret wish: the adolescently romantic idea that there was someone out there for me; someone I hadn't met yet who would ask me on a date and make sense of my life. I harbored the hope, I'm now embarrassed to admit, that like a girl in a Lifetime movie, I would look into someone's eyes and find a reflection of my inner life. But sometime between my teenage years and the first years in New York, that idea had pretty well evaporated. I'd grown up.

This is what dating is like, I thought, this horrible mix of boredom and fear and humiliation and confusion.

Change rarely happens in doses large enough to choke you. Everyday you swallow a little more and expect a little less.

I might not yet be falling in love, but I might be flirting with the promise of love, the idea of love, the making of a place in my heart for love, though it may have been more a wish than a promise.

The feeling of freedom, driving into scenery as green and lush as a postcard of Ireland was close to bliss.