I thought about the coastal inn. The sea view we’d chosen. The cliff walk I’d researched, four miles along the headland with the ocean below. I had wanted that so specifically and for so long that letting it go had felt like losing something physical, something with weight and texture.
But I also thought about the other thing — the thing I had realized somewhere in the middle of my quiet week. That the trip, even if I’d gone, would not have given me what I’d been hungry for. The hunger wasn’t really for the sea view or the cliff walk; it was for the feeling of being in an unmanaged life with a person who was paying attention to me rather than to everyone else’s needs. The coastal cottage, the sea salt morning air, the long walks — those had been containers for a feeling I wanted. If the feeling wasn’t going to be there, the container wasn’t the point.
I wanted to believe that the feeling could come back. I believed it was possible. Whether it was probable depended on things that hadn’t happened yet.
I did the dishes. I went to bed at a reasonable hour and slept without difficulty, which surprised me slightly. I have found that decision-making, even hard decision-making, is less disruptive to sleep than the anticipatory dread that precedes it. By the time you’ve made the decision, the worst of the uncertainty is over.
## Ten Years: A Partial Inventory
Ten years is long enough to accumulate a version of someone. Not the complete version — I don’t think we ever get the complete version of another person — but the layered one, built from thousands of small observations that add up to something you can’t explain simply.