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I am an introvert. I know this about myself. I enjoy being alone. Moreover — as is true of most introverts, I think — I romanticize the idea of being alone. But being alone for any real length of time is romantic only in theory.

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Being single on Valentine’s Day is not something to be ashamed or embarrassed about. In fact, I think it calls for a celebration.

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Be the person you want to say hello to in the morning and goodnight to in the evening. Be the person you want to look in the mirror at and smile because you are glorious.

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To be able to love is a beautiful thing, but that also means we are able to hurt, to feel afraid, to feel alone. It’s intrinsic — we ache for connection.

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Because I learned to compliment myself versus waiting to hear it from someone else. I am confident solely on my own.

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Being lonely does not mean failure or inadequacy; it is merely the kind of suffering we collectively must undergo in order to understand, experience, and recognize that greater capacity for love within us.

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“How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.”

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But there is something about the dark spaces in the sky, where the light of the moon doesn’t touch the dark velvet drapes. They draw out the words that harbor under my ribcage.

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She was reading a book at the register — in the contented aura of her own attractiveness, it seemed — slowly masticating on something hard enough to be erotically heard from the aisles throughout which I wandered.

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In junior high, I was deeply, irrevocably, and violently in love with Nicole Eggert, who played Jamie in Charles in Charge (1987-1990), starring Scott Baio as a live-in caregiver to the Powell family, in which Jamie was the eldest and most sultry daughter.