In the eleven years since my arranged marriage fell apart, I fell in love once, and was infatuated more times than I care to remember. On most of those infatuations, I look back and wonder how I had been so deluded. I regret more than one of them. Now I see the constant desire that I walked around in as a function of nature. Life wants to continue, and if I was to be a part of that, this was my last chance.

I walked around in an almost constant state of desire. I was never satisfied, and I was almost constantly yearning. I became pregnant three more times, none of which came to term.

This year, my feelings became neutral in a way I had never before experienced. I no longer noticed men as objects of attraction, and if I did, it was only from the distance of one who cannot or does not wish to participate. I envied men, who never have to experience this shift into invisibility.

Now, halfway into the year, I looked back on images of myself, in a boudoir photo shoot, and expressing my sultry side for the Identity Shift Project, and I wanted to delete the images, because that's not who I am now. But I don't delete them, because I don't want to erase the identity I have created, however misleading it is.

As for my identity as a writer, I still like to think that I will have something more to say one day. But on this day, I don't know what that will be.

Traditionally, in the best stories, someone wants something they don't have. Untold obstacles stand in their way. Just as they are about to lose hope, they triumph. Can there be a story without conflict, where everything happens exactly as the main character desires?

There may not be a story without conflict, but in every story there are perfect moments. Clarissa in Mrs. Dalloway has her kiss with Sally Seton. Jane Eyre has the moment when Mr. Rochester proposes to her. Callie in Middlesex has the moment she runs away to assume a male identity.

Earlier this year, I started collecting perfect moments. So far I have collected stories of birth, of love, of awe at natural beauty, of liberation, of triumph, and of being at peace with the world. I have visited an orgasmic meditation group, the dungeon of a castle, and a law of attraction workshop, where a woman channels "infinite intelligence."

From that workshop, I remembered two things in particular:

"Don't do anything that you're not inspired to do."

"Realities change, even realities that are said to be unchangeable."

This is the perfect moment I collected yesterday.

"I remember feeling that everything was exactly as it should be, but I can't remember exactly the circumstances. Life is always giving us this way forward. It's happened to me a lot while traveling, like when a stranger gives me a place to stay or when I get a job just when I'm running short on money."