An intensely painful stomach ache kept me awake that night. Every time I lay down, my head spun and nausea swelled in my throat. I ran from the tent to the portable toilet a handful of times. I desperately wanted to vomit. And I tried. But I couldn't. We were scheduled to have five hours of sleep that night, but I managed to get only an hour and a half. I'd felt so strong, almost invincible up to this point.

Most notifications earned a disinterested glance from me, and I ended up swiping them away, too lazy to change settings. But there was one type of notification that got my full attention every time: an alert from Reddit reminding me that I had a new message. Not a short and snappy message like the “What’s up?” casually sent by my friends—rather, it was almost always a long, carefully thought-out letter amounting to at least a thousand words.

I don't think I knew it at the time, but I was desperate for love when she came into my life. I had been with my husband for two years and the marriage was dying. We didn't like or trust each other, and we weren't happy. There was no intimacy in the relationship.

I was pulling a pizza out of the oven when I nicked the heating element with my left ring finger. Now where a ring might be, I have a half-centimeter stripe, symmetrical enough to suggest a wedding band, a reminder of those I've worn before. It's red—the color of stop, of angry, of hurt—evoking both my marriages: the good one that reached "until death do us part," far too soon, and the bad one that made me feel diminished.

Even in the musty Catskills cottage my parents rented during the summer I came of age, their bed was the place we went to heal. Even as tiny, satin ballet slippers hung from the mahogany headboard and a pink chenille spread covered it, like a sticky sweet frosting, this lumpy mattress was where we found succor.

Cameron, my boyfriend of six months, sits across from me in the cheap, Canton Chinese restaurant where we always eat. The white-walled, empty space fills with light through the windows, and wood tables are vacantly spread throughout. We look at each other blankly. The only sounds that come out our mouths are loud chews and slurps of stir-fry noodles hitting our lips with long, hungry uncomfortableness.

Modern love doesn’t mean a type of love we haven’t seen before, but it does mean it’s a love still seen as radical by those it encounters. It makes people look twice when they see you walking down the street. It makes your friends comment, “I’m so happy for you!” on your Instagram pics. It both surprises and entangles everyone it meets, creating an aura they begin to crave as well. It’s the type of love they should really be making potions for.

“I think you’re better off without me.” I blubbered, my hair thick in unwashed, oily residue. My clothes, more suitable for sleeping than for wearing out, a mess. As I heard myself say those words, I almost didn’t recognize myself. I, the romantic. The believer of fairy-tales and forever afters.

“Learn to make collages. Water your plant. Collect lucky pennies.”

Let’s be honest, you’re not going to make collages or collect lucky pennies. That seems like a waste of time. You do, however, eat a weed brownie and read Claudia Rankine’s Citizen in one sitting at a bar.

My mother’s treats have always been unexpected, precious morsels,
savored as much for their surprise as for their flavor—
a summer lunch of a lobster roll and coffee frappe at Gulf Hill creamery,
a butterscotch candy retrieved from deep within a purse,

I am difficult to love. I know that. And I’m pretty impossible to live with. Trust me, I recognize that too. I’m stubborn, have high expectations, and can be a smart ass. Luckily for me, I fell in love with someone with the exact same qualities. Clearly everything goes smoothly in our house on a daily basis. I’ve never found myself saying, “Do you even know what a toilet bowl brush looks like?”