On Friday I will attend a Seder. I will bring an Israeli salad, drink kosher red wine and read from the Haggadah as it is passed around the table among friends. I will be with peers, although I am not Jewish.

“You are a Jew at heart,” a friend said when I told him that I’m emptying my house and starting over, filling it with things I love, things not from the past, things my ex-lover never touched, things without memory.

I do not believe in God and I say this. But I do believe in Spring. I do believe in Resurrection. I do believe in rebirth and emerging nearer to our truer selves.

In two weeks I will meet someone new. He might someday push my curly hair from my face and tell me that I am a dream. I believe in dreams. I believe that I was once someone’s dream.

“Are you real?” Michael asked me on a Wednesday, his face so near to mine that I could feel every hot vowel, see every fleck of gold in his bourbon-colored eyes. “I mean it…are you REAL? Because I feel like I dreamt you. You are my impossible dream. How are you possible? You are everything. Really, you are everything.” With my right hand cradling his face and his legs beneath mine, we felt like everything.

Allowing someone else the power to define you is dangerous: when, three years later, my lover declared that I was nothing, I became nothing.

I know that I should rewrite my self-description, but I can’t. There are only a few words for ’empty’ and none are interesting. I am further drained by my efforts, so, for now, I am satisfied by my emptiness. I am forgotten, and bland, and that blank spot on the shelf. Something was there once, but I don’t care to remember it.

I do remember happiness, though; we were in my kitchen. The light was perfect and my iPod played the old tunes, reminiscent of childhood and the security of being able to take love for granted. The familiar smell of the lemon chicken and the way he turned the potatoes made my head fuzzy and warm. He was at the stove like he belonged there and I was hovering: post-coital and blissful and floating. A fluttery feeling started low in my stomach and danced to my mouth where it announced itself in confident, vibrant love. I thought he was it. I thought we were it. I thought I could trust that moment and the many moments before and after.

That moment was something. Wasn’t it? Or must I denounce that memory with all of the rest?

This Friday I will attend a Seder. I will bring an Israeli salad and pass the Haggadah among my peers. I will think of an adjective for myself; I will think of a dozen ways I want to be. I will fill my foundation, walls and floors with things that have never been touched, feelings not from my past, people who I could love, and sketches of who I might still become.

I will build from that.