Michelle Orange

Is it considered unadventurous if you really don't feel like doing it? Sometimes I lie awake parcelling out my adventurousness or lack thereof. Should I have done it anyway on the off-chance that something adventurous would happen, and damn the consequences of giving a faulty impression in the process? Can you choose your adventures or does that make them comprised? I think I only take chances when there is a good chance of reward. I may have it all wrong.

There was something fundamentally embarrassing about being a young woman...[the] embarrassment of wanting to be more assured, more substantive, more whole, of moving to tap resources that simply weren't there.

Of all my failures to offset the mortification of wanting, expecting, or caring too much, the most humiliating was having no real answer for the love of a good man. It humbled me.