I sit and look out over the San Diego Bay. What led me to this Southern tip of the United States involves a road trip to thirty-four states, selling all of my possessions, buying a seventeen –foot van, a decision to move to Abu Dhabi and a family drama that was so vicious and hateful I still have nightmares about it all these years later. Those details are just the small stuff, though. There is a before San Diego. There is a before my husband.

There is a bridge, three bottles of pills and two strangers. I didn’t do it for attention. I wasn’t saying, “Help me, look at me, notice me,” or anything like that. I wasn’t reaching out or thinking about a rescue. I was thinking about putting an end to a fractured mind.

On the bridge, a man gave me his hand and pulled me over the ledge to safety. On the interstate between Tacoma and Seattle, a man stopped after I passed out behind the wheel of my car. The details are blurry because by then the medication was pumping through my body with every heartbeat. The man waited for an ambulance. His last words before they closed the door, were, “Is she going to make it?”

I don’t know the exact day they rushed me to the hospital and spent all night monitoring my heart. I wish I did know the day so I could celebrate my anniversary, my second chance, the beginning of the new. I do know it it has been somewhere close to twenty years ago.

Twenty birthdays I came within minutes of not having. Twenty Christmas stockings that I would never have opened. A marriage to the love of my life where I would have never said, “I do.” There are approximately 7,300 mornings of kissing my husband. There are over 7,000 times I have heard the words, “I love you,” in the morning and before I go to sleep. It is the sunsets and sunrises. It is a morning cup of coffee.

It is hearing the voices of my parents and my brothers. It is doing things for the first time like baking biscuits or doing something the thousandth time like taking a long walk. It is trying new foods like kale or cauliflower pizza dough. It is a being a part of new trends. It is watching social media develop and the ability to send video and emojis on a smartphone.

It is watching my nieces and nephews grow from toddlers to adults. It is the incredible highs like a published article or poem in a prestigious magazine or journal. It is incredible lows and sadness as you watch your country fracture and fight. It is crying at car commercials and stories about lost pets. It is donating to a GoFundMe campaign. It is finishing a novel you are sure you would never forget (and then forgetting it). It is seeing artists express themselves in words, photographs, paint, clay, fabric, neon, and every other imaginable material and way.

It is putting on soft pajamas before bed or spending a day in those same pajamas. It is waking up every morning for over twenty years with the words, “Thank you,” on your lips as a cry, a sigh, and a prayer.