Amid a confusing collection of emotions, the monster of self-doubt carrying what feels like a truckload of rejection letters, the exhaustion, the loss of all sense of time, the regret, the REGRET, I am still here. Mistakes have been made. There is no time travel invented (that I know of) to fix them. I have walked around saying there is nothing left in me—I said this; this week I said it—and though there may be air inside, a vacant patch of lukewarm air, sometimes colder, sometimes much colder, there is something else in there I can’t deny. The desire to keep going. I just can’t swat the damn thing away. It won’t be drowned like a kitten—I would never ever drown a kitten!—it won’t be balled up and thrown across the room, it won’t be ignored, not for longer than a day. Here it is now, all dingy, pock-marked, dragged in mud. It’s what I have left. Is it enough? It has to be.