Recollections of My Nonexistence

by Rebecca Solnit

I meet young people now who seem clear about their needs and selves, their emotions and others’ feelings, in ways that seem astonishingly advanced to me. I too was a wayfaring stranger in that country of inner life, and my attempts to orient myself and find a language to describe what was going on within would be slow, stumbling, and painful. If I had luck in all this, it was the luck of being able to continue to evolve, of being someone gradually, imperceptibly changing, sometimes by intention, sometimes by increments and impulses invisible to me. Of being an acorn that kept rolling. In that little apartment I found a home in which to metamorphose, a place to stay while I changed and made a place in the world beyond. I accrued skills and knowledge and eventually friends and a sense of belonging. Or rather I grew to find that the margins could be the richest place, the perch between realms you could enter and exit.