That idea, though, of the legacy I’m leaving is rattling around in my brain and my heart. I’ve preferred to believe that I can be all things to all people, but when I’m honest about my life, in the past couple years I’ve been better from a distance than I have been in my own home—I’ve given more to strangers and publishers and people who stand in line after events than I have to my neighbors, my friends. I come home weary and self-protective, pulled into a shell of exhaustion and depleted emotions. This is, to be clear, not the legacy I want to leave.
