Cacktopia - 1. The opening

She's convinced that everyone's life has an arc, like a line on a graph. Most of the time, when you're in the midst of your life, you might have a sense of the ups and downs of the day, the week, the month, the year. But it's only with distance, with the perspective of the years, that you can see the shape of the arc; and the whole arc can only be plotted when you are dead.

But here she is, still not quite believing that her life could have taken the turn that it has.