As soon as I started to feel a little better, grief rushed in. Only now, some years out, having had my two sons—watching them grow in good health—does the sorrow fully flood me. I feel a black hole for what I lost: nearly the entire decade of my thirties, which might otherwise have been the best decade of my life. So many possibilities and freedoms. And why? The pain and anger are still there, inside me: flashes of the old sense that I was—or am—gradually leaving my life before I wanted to.
