Hi from the other side of the river. When I say "the river" I'm just indulging in an obvious metaphor because it's midnight in a crowded bar and I'm writing from my notes app, and it seems like we've all got impossible things to make our way through right now. In my head it's broad and roiling, lined with trees like old gods.

Do you ever feel like your life is a country of rivers — a terrain spiderveined with things to get across, as simple as a busy season at a horrendous job or as complicated as realizing you're not exactly the gender you were assigned at birth? Things you don't have any choice in.

Sometimes I can hear my past selves calling, stuck in a whipcord current or balancing tipsy on a rock midstream, and I'm not sure if all of me has made it. But, here I am. Here you are.

Does it feel sometimes like grief is a hunter waiting for stillness, for us to hesitate in a break between trees, get caught halfway through crossing? But then other days there's nothing between you and the world and the water is icy and fresh and like the best of summer when you're just about eight.

So, hi from here, from a night bar in Manhattan, from (metaphorically) thigh deep in water and mud, from almost the other side of another thing I wasn't certain I'd survive. Come on in (as they say) the water's fine.