Before this, I spent a year heartbroken, in a lapse of self-imposed exile, in a very small city where I never intended to spend the rest of my life. Here, I managed to make up for what I see as lost time. I met a lot of people. I formed bonds. I found real fondness for a lot of very different men. Mostly, I lived the shit out of that year, and surfaced from it feeling more grateful, more self-assured, more at ease, more accepting—maybe even, dare I say, more patient.