The Lover's Return
From the underworld of forgetting
Before we begin, a small orienting note from my very human life: I’ve been moving through full days and foggy nights in North India. The book is still mid-alchemy—currently at its fifth test print—and if all goes well, it will finally step into the world by mid-January. I’ve been nursing a head cold and pouring my energy into volunteering for the second time in five years with Acts of Love, where the work is grounding, tender, and asks everything of the heart. In the midst of all this, this piece arrived. It feels less like an essay and more like a threshold—an opening note, a synopsis, maybe even a quiet prelude to the memoir that’s been circling me for years. Consider this a first knock on that door.
I USED TO BE AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST. The kind who kept a smile through heartbreak, who hunted silver linings like treasure, who believed the bigger picture would make sense of even the smallest cuts. I thought it was my superpower—this wide open heart. And maybe it was.
I was a brave eighteen-year-old girl once, setting off for the world before we had Google to map our routes through the unknown, before we could find shelter for the night on our phones, before we could read ratings, book tickets, and make friends through our devices. I went out there with an email address like a thin umbilical cord keeping me connected to the place where I grew up, but really, I was just out there with a wad of travellers’ cheques, a rucksack of belongings and an absolute faith in the goodness of the world and what it would provide for me if I kept my heart open to its mystery.
I lived like that for years, between cities and villages, lives half-lived, friends scattered like the tab of lovers I was was quickly growing. Guess it wasn’t just my heart that was open, ya know? I fell in lust everywhere — with the bus conductor on my ride through the San Pedro de Atacama, the jewel-eyed Rajasthani boy who made falafels on the streets of Pushkar, the Bedouin guy I rubbed up against on the back of his donkey in Jordan. I lived for that rush of electricity and twist of the groin I felt when a portal of possibility opened between a stranger and me. If there was a chance, I never missed it. I’d cancel trips, delay departures, and reroute everything for a romantic whim.
