I rebuilt my savings.

I took a trip alone to the coast, and stood on a beach at the far edge of the country, and felt, for the first time in years, unwatched and unafraid and entirely myself.

I filled my apartment with plants and light.

I set my grandmother’s ring and bracelet and, eventually, her recovered locket on a shelf where I could see them every morning, three small proofs that I had been loved unconditionally once and could recognize the difference now between that and what I’d mistaken for it.

And near the end of that year, on the night of my parents’ next anniversary — the one on the patio, with the string lights — my phone buzzed on the table with a message from a kind man named Reeve, a designer at my agency I’d had dinner with twice, asking if I’d like to see a film with him.

I smiled at the screen.