The Inner Life

Most of us carry a picture of ourselves. It didn’t arrive all at once. It built up slowly, out of thousands of small reflections: the face someone made when we said something too loudly as children, the compliment we half-believed and then quietly filed away, the mistake that stayed with us far longer than…

There’s a particular loneliness that doesn’t show up when you’re alone. It shows up at dinner, surrounded by people you love, in the middle of a conversation that’s going fine, when you notice you’ve drifted somewhere else and can’t quite say where. Not bored. Not upset. Just not entirely there. This isn’t the loneliness…