Seven years ago, I joined a support group. The loneliness of my Clemlessness—privately, that’s what I called it—had become so acute that I could feel it pulling me away, like an undertow, from the people I loved who were still alive. (I angered easily. I wanted to yell at them, “You don’t fucking know!”—not just about what they might lose but about anything, everything: politics, art, laundry, taxes. I saw them as not just ignorant but smug, not just naïve but stupid.

Author: Julia Glass