Life, as always, is kicking me in the butt. Why can’t anything ever go the way I expect or want? There’s a budding excitement beating away inside, and keeping pace with it is fear and uncertainty. For as long as I can remember, it’s been like that. The joys were always short-lived or interspersed with something horrible. It got so I learned not to be too happy because there was always a threatening cloud hanging over me.

Last night had been like that, lying in bed with him, going ...