I stood just inside his home, and took a breath; exhaled. Perhaps the first deep breath I’d taken since the first night my ex-husband finally agreed to leave the house, and finally did. I vaguely remember a litany running through my stunned/stupor/terrified/hopeful head: Karma is real. God loves me. I am okay. This is my reward.

It was a one night stand, begun in an online personal, on a rainy night.

That night I had “complete” sex for the first time with someone other than my ex-husband in almost 17 years. It was only the second time I’d had sex in 3 years.

It was a magical, beautiful, a fairy tale of a one night stand. It was dirty, raw, raunchy sex; a mess, in the best way possible. It was improbable, and ridiculous, and perfect.

I didn’t make a safe call; I followed a strange man through a dark part of town a rainy, lonely night. We’d had a barely comprehensible half-hearted text conversation about safe sex and boundaries online, with a promise to follow up in person (which we didn’t really do, besides use a condom). I missed the bus home, my cab wouldn’t come, and when it did I dropped a condom on the seat as I got out. Which the cabby kindly pointed out to me. When I got home, I sat on my couch, stunned, for a very long time. And then I cried, while smiling, while laughing. I was alive.

I don’t want to write more about this; not now, not here. My memory of that night is my own precious jewel to be polished, loved, held on a shelf. To be pulled out when I am down, when the odds are against me, when the deck is stacked, when my back is at the wall. To say nothing of the eroticism. I made choices, and I not only survived, but thrived… even when, perhaps, I shouldn’t have.