I felt both wildly, piercingly glad to be alive and also like I did not know what to do with the life I now held in my hands. It was as if someone had handed me the moon, and what does one do with the moon? What does one do with a life when one had expected to be dead?

The realization that I am not longer at war with the world-that I am, rather, able to love it wholeheartedly, though my attempts to show this love sometimes are muddled-is an indescribable relief. I no longer gallop into each day brandishing my little sword, as I did for years. I just get up and go out into the world, do as much right as I can, fix all the things I do wrong as soon as I’m able, and feel an overwhelming gratitude that the war I was fighting is done.