“‘This is Diana—our family dropout,’ my mother said for the fifteenth Thanksgiving in a row, but when my sister’s new husband reached across the table to shake my hand, his grip locked, his face went still, and the room forgot how to laugh before he said the two words nobody there was prepared to hear”

empathy, half gentle teasing, and I almost laughed.

I drove back to campus the following Sunday and watched Richmond disappear in the rearview mirror and thought, I do not know how long I can keep doing this.

The answer, it turned out, was one more semester.

The thing about making a decision that runs counter to everything you were raised toward is that continue reading …