like eggs in a cake.

“All right then.  Plan on dinner at six.  Your friend can come too, if you’d like.”

“That’s okay,” I say.  One thing I know is that I’ll be worn out by four thirty or five.  I’ll need a break. When it’s new and important, you have to rest in between times.  And anyway, even when I like a person there is a weariness that comes.  I can be with someone and everything is fine and then all of a sudden it can wash over me like a sickness, that I need the quiet of my own self.  I need to unload my head and look at what I’ve got in there so far.  See it.  Think what it means.  I always need to come back to being alone for awhile.  I guess I sort of got used to it when I was younger and now it is mixed in my character like eggs in a cake.  Sometimes I wonder, does this mean I’ll have to be a nun or something?

– Elizabeth Berg, Joy School